The Small Time
Come on, admit it, wouldn’t it be kinda fun to go on a world-class sociopathic spree where you get to play billionaire, are profiled on magazine covers and cable talk shows, party with celebs on yachts, and when it all blows up either cry for the judge or stay on the lam in the Bahamas (and hope you don’t have a fatal boating “accident”). Sure, being Elizabeth Holmes or Sam Bankman-Fried isn’t all black turtlenecks and polyamory, but if you’re going to be a pure crook, why not go large so later, when it’s all gone, you can remember when you were The Big Time.
If you’re some half-ass pair of doctors charged “with $2.6 Million Illegal Opioid Distribution Conspiracy,” that is so penny ante, you have to feel like you’ve wasted your life. Medical school, residency, honing a fine camouflage of empathy and veneer of selflessness all the while, trying for the big, self-perpetuating con and all the good things that come with it.
How sad is it when the low-brows at the FBI ring your name out publicly, along with some henchpersons at a string of “pain clinics” in the Detroit area – Detroit?? This just gets sadder. I’d like to think the rationale was to save up some escape money, but that’s never how these bottom feeders think (Conrad Murray, MD was pulling down $100K PER MONTH giving Michael Jackson nightly propofol, and that idiot didn’t even have a trouble bag and private flight to the Caymans on standby).
Doctors who don’t work for Pfizer or run the NIH are just not very good at really big-time larceny. “The indictment charges the defendants with a drug conspiracy involving Schedule II controlled substances, including Oxycodone, Oxymorphone, Oxycodone-Acetaminophen (Percocet), and Hydrocodone (Norco), some of the most addictive and commonly diverted opioids having a significant street value.” That is so pre-Fentanyl, you’d think they were spending their ill-gotten loot on “Baywatch” reunion cruises.
“At each clinic location, patients were recruited by “patient recruiters” such as Williams, to see Drs. Bayolo and Gonzalez Garcia via telehealth. These doctors were paid to illegally issue opioid prescriptions, with no physical examination, for patients who had no legitimate medical need for the drugs.” Telehealth?? Did these morons not learn anything from the greatest drug dealer of all time, Walter White on “Breaking Bad”? You’d end up in the ER if your drinking game was to take a shot every time he tore a burner phone in half in the last couple of seasons. But no, these lemonade-stand wannabes left not only a prescription trail with the state and pharmacies, but a digital trail of video with time stamps easy to cross-reference with any junkies they felt like leveraging into a plea bargain.
“According to the indictment, Drs. Bayolo and Gonzalez Garcia, along with other medical professionals, prescribed more than 500,000 dosage units of Schedule II controlled substances.”
And these failed creatures not only hurt themselves, and their junkie-clients, but also you and I. Every time I want to write so much as two days of Tussionex for a geriatric bronchitis, I’m required by law to sign on to a state website, enter the name and DOB of the patient, and review whatever they may have gotten over the past year. That is a waste of my time, and an insult to my judgment, but morons like this gave the evil government (redundancy intended) more angles to come after honest physicians.
“It is particularly disturbing when physicians break their oaths and illegally distribute highly addictive drugs. My office remains committed to pursuing medical providers who abuse their roles as physicians to harm our community.” U.S. Attorney Ison said. Great, I really want a politically motivated hatchet lecturing me about keeping oaths.
“When medical professionals and others scheme to illegally provide medically unnecessary prescription drugs, they put patients at risk and drive up the cost of health care for everyone,” said James A. Tarasca, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Detroit Field Office. “The FBI and our law enforcement partners will continue to investigate this type of health care fraud scheme and bring those who operate these criminal schemes to justice.” And the corrupt FBI moralizing at corrupt doctors and junkie clients is more than a little like Tony Fauci stuffing Big Pharma kickbacks in his lab coat pocket while “representing ‘scy-uunce’.”
With no apologies whatsoever, I think the War On Drugs, Hallelujah! was proven a miserable failure forty years ago, and it has only consumed bigger budgets and curtailed more civil liberties while enriching drug cartels and priming everyone for some cheap Chinese fentanyl. I would end ALL drug laws pertaining to adults five minutes ago, and no one would be the worse for it … except for those thug government agents who would have to go to work for Amazon. I also think these drug-pusher doctors are absolute scum, who hurt a lot of people, and I don’t otherwise mind that they are getting theirs, I just don’t think it’s worth the collateral damage. Let us hope for their sakes when they finally get to the joint, and the big scary dude sitting next to them asks, “What are you in for?”, they show more imagination and quicker thinking than they did on the outside.
Did you read the link?
“with $2.6 Million Illegal Opioid Distribution Conspiracy,” Links to this site:
https://www.justice.gov/usao-edmi/pr/two-doctors-and-operators-three-pain-clinics-charged-26-million-illegal-opioid
One of the six people charged:
Latrina Williams, 45, of Sterling Heights, Michigan
HOW THE HELL could anyone name their kid Latrina?
Named the sister Urinalia? Spitoonia?
Maybe I shouldn’t give anyone ideas.
Some countries have laws governing what names you can use for your kids.
Maybe they’re on to something.
At least my EMR integrates with the prescribing drug monitoring program in my state, so at least it is fast to check, but I know my patients, and I am never surprised. There really aren’t problems. It is interesting, and only a tiny bit of positive news on the government, in 2016, the CDC sent a letter to every provider in America that said if you wrote any narcotics ever you were a murderer and a horrible person. Now that the suicide rate has exceeded the overdose death rate, and they see how stupid, shortsighted, and evil their position was, they have said, in the voice of Alicia Silverstone from Clueless, “my bad.”
I simply gave up my DEA license. The charge is incredible. YOU ARE ALL FUNDING THE DEA WITH THE ABSURD RENEWAL FEE! (Maybe the drug dealers should be the ones funding this agency????) I tell patients if they hurt that bad, they need to go to the ER. My surgical patients are medicated by the anesthesiologist. I do not have time to log onto the governments slowest website- EFORCSE!
Pat, you are SO on target. Great column. Especially when you write about collateral damage. What really kills me is government reaction to problems. A small percentage of doctors are abusing their Rx privelege, so government punishes us all. I so resent that I have to jump through hoops daily because some clinicians are criminals. I really HATE government broad brush actions. I HATE government period. And politicians. And bureaucrats. I am ready for the revolution and/or the civil war. Because this environment of government-induced slavery ain’t gonna fix itself.