.jpg&w=3840&q=100)
Doctor lied to patients about them having diseases to make $28M in Texas, feds say
A Texas doctor was sentenced to prison after federal officials said he told his patients they had diseases they didn't have in order to make millions.
Dr. Jorge Zamora-Quezada, 68, was sentenced to 10 years in prison and ordered to repay over $28 million, including 13 real estate properties, a jet and a Maserati, according to a May 21 news release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
McClatchy News reached out to Zamora-Quezada's attorney for comment May 22 but did not immediately hear back.
The Justice Department said Zamora-Quezada lived a luxurious life and lied to patients so he could receive payments from insurance companies.
Zamora-Quezada defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, TRICARE and Blue Cross Blue Shield by falsely diagnosing his patients with rheumatoid arthritis, the Justice Department said.
He then gave the patients 'toxic medications,' according to federal officials.
Zamora-Quezada made patients believe they had 'a life-long, incurable condition that required regular treatment at his offices,' the Justice Department said.
He would administer 'unnecessary treatments' and order 'unnecessary testing' on the patients, according to the Justice Department. This included different 'injections, infusions, x-rays, MRIs, and other procedures—all with potentially harmful and even deadly side effects,' the agency said.
Zamora-Quezada also fabricated medical records and lied to insurers about the patients' conditions, the Justice Department said.
'Dr. Zamora-Quezada funded his luxurious lifestyle for two decades by traumatizing his patients, abusing his employees, lying to insurers, and stealing taxpayer money,' Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, said in the news release.
Other rheumatologists testified that hundreds of their patients diagnosed by Zamora-Quezada in fact did not have rheumatoid arthritis, according to federal officials.
Some patients suffered from 'debilitating' side effects from the 'powerful' medications they were given, including strokes, hair loss, liver damage, pain and necrosis of the jawbone, the Justice Department said.
One patient said in court that they were 'constantly being in bed and being unable to get up from bed alone, and being pumped with medication, I didn't feel like my life had any meaning.'
'Testimony also revealed Zamora-Quezada's obstruction of insurer audits by fabricating missing patient files, including by taking ultrasounds of employees and using those images as documentation in the patient records,' federal officials said.
The Justice Department said the scheme involved over $118 million in false claims and over $28 million paid out by insurers.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Nearly 11 million Americans would lose insurance under Trump's tax bill, analysis says
About 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage under the President Donald Trump's tax cut bill that cleared the House but faces a tough test in the Senate, a new analysis shows. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said about 10.9 million Americans would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 under the bill, including 1.4 million undocumented residents who get coverage through state-funded programs. The legislation that cleared the House would require nondisabled Americans on Medicaid to work at least 80 hours per month or qualify for an exemption, such as being a student or caregiver. The bill also would strip coverage to immigrants who get Medicaid through state-funded programs. The analysis said the bill would cut federal spending by about $1.3 trillion through 2034. But it would also deliver tax cuts of $3.75 trillion, and the federal deficit would increase nearly $2.4 trillion over the next decade. Health analysts said if the Medicaid changes as well as tweaks to the Affordable Care Act marketplace clear Congress, the effects on health insurance coverage would be significant. The CBO earlier estimated nearly 4 million people would lose health insurance coverage through 2034 if Congress did not extend sweetened COVID-19 pandemic-era tax credits that have made ACA plans more affordable for consumers. Trump's Medicaid overhaul as well as the expiration of the more generous ACA tax credit could jeopardize health insurance coverage for nearly 15 million people, said Kathy Hempstead, a senior policy officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "We're making a giant U-turn here," said Hempstead. "Are we really going to be a thriving, productive society if we have a huge share of our population uninsured?" Hempstead said the uninsured might delay care and accrue more medical debt. She also said hospitals and doctors also will take a financial hit as uncompensated care rises. "There's going to be a big hit on on the health care economy as people stop getting care and start trying to get care that they can't pay for," Hempstead said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: CBO says 10.9 million to lose insurance under Trump tax bill
Yahoo
9 hours ago
- Yahoo
GOP's health care plan: We're all going to die, so whatever
If death and taxes are the only certainties, Joni Ernst is here to cut one and fast-track the other. 'We all are going to die," she said. You might think that's a line from a nihilistic French play. Or something a teenage goth said in Hot Topic. Or an epiphany from your stoner college roommate after he watched Interstellar at 3 a.m. But that was actually the Iowa Senator's God-honest response to concerns that slashing Medicaid to achieve President Trump's 'Big Beautiful Bill' would lead to more preventable deaths. The full exchange at a May 30 town hall included one audience member shouting at the stage, 'People will die!' And Ernst responding, 'People are not — well, we all are going to die, so for heaven's sake.' That's not a health care policy — that's a horoscope for the terminally screwed. As you can imagine, the internet didn't love it, because losing your health should not trigger the equivalent of a shrug emoji from someone elected to serve the public good. But rather than walking it back, Ernst leaned in, filming a mock apology in a graveyard because nothing says, 'I care about your future,' like filming next to people who don't have one. Opinion: Nurses are drowning while Braun ignores Indiana's health care crisis Ernst's comments aren't just philosophical musings. She's justifying policy choices that cause real harm. If passed, this bill would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, remove health coverage for up to 7.6 million Americans. That's not just 'we all die someday' territory. That's 'some people will die soon and needlessly.' What makes this even more galling is that the people pushing these cuts have access to high-quality, taxpayer-subsidized healthcare. Congress gets the AAA, platinum, concierge-level government plan. Meanwhile, millions of Americans are told to try their luck with essential oils or YouTube acupuncture tutorials. Honestly, it felt more like performance art than policy: 'Sorry about your grandma getting kicked out of her assisted living facility. Please enjoy this scenic view of her future! LOL!' We're not asking you to defeat death, senator. Death is both inevitable and bipartisan. But there is a broad chasm between dying peacefully at 85 and dying in your 40's because your Medicaid plan disappeared and your GoFundMe didn't meet its goal. Fundamentally, governing is about priorities. A budget is a moral document. When a lawmaker tells you 'we're all going to die' in response to a policy choice, they're telling you 'I've made peace with your suffering as collateral damage.' And if a U.S. Senator can stand in a cemetery and joke about it, you have to wonder — who do our federal legislators think those graves are for? Opinion: Indiana DCS cut foster care in half — and now claims children are safer This isn't just about one comment or one bill. It's about a mindset that treats healthcare as a luxury rather than a right. If death is inevitable, then access to healthcare you can afford is what helps determine how long you have, how comfortably you live, and whether you get to watch your kids grow up. Healthcare isn't about escaping death. It's about dignity and quality of life while we are here. Ernst got one thing right: death will come for us all. But leadership, real leadership, is about helping people live as long and as well as they can before that day comes. You want to make jokes, Senator? Fine. But if your punchline is 'You're all going to die anyway,' don't be surprised when your constituents realize the joke's on them. Kristin Brey is the "My Take" columnist for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Joni Ernst films graveyard video after telling sick people "we all die" | Opinion
New York Times
10 hours ago
- New York Times
We Saw Medicaid Work Requirements Up Close. You Don't Want This Chaos.
Many of the Republicans pushing for Medicaid work requirements — permanent program cuts that will strip up to 14 million people of their health care coverage — likely have no idea what it takes to comply with them. We do. As legal aid lawyers, we were on the front lines helping low-income people in Arkansas keep their health care coverage when the state rolled out work requirements in 2018. The policy caused chaos for everyone involved: people receiving Medicaid, hospitals and health clinics, pharmacies, social services organizations and state agency caseworkers. No officials serious about governing should willingly create such problems for their own state. Over 18,160 people in Arkansas lost coverage in only five months before courts halted the policy. Many were our clients. Adrian McGonigal had chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, for which he received treatment. At the time he held a job working 30 to 40 hours a week at a poultry plant, which paid more than any other job he'd had before and should have satisfied the requirement. But the state's system for automatically identifying working people was faulty, and Mr. McGonigal struggled to navigate the complex monthly reporting system on his own. Unable to report his work, he lost Medicaid, couldn't afford his C.O.P.D. medications, wound up in the hospital emergency room several times, lost his job and never fully recovered. For the next several years he struggled in various minimum-wage jobs, earning much less than he had at the poultry plant. Sadly, he died in November. We saw many working people face similar challenges. Our clients ran the gamut of low-wage work: fast food workers, restaurant dishwashers and servers, construction workers, janitors, landscapers, motel cleaners, gas station clerks and nursing assistants. Many had disabilities, and their ability to continue working depended on getting treatment to manage chronic pain, asthma, injuries, cancer and mental health conditions. Some lost coverage simply because they couldn't navigate the policy's complicated requirements and labyrinthine reporting process. Others lost insurance because of the instability of low-wage work: Bosses cut their hours or laid them off without warning, limited public transit narrowed their options or they lived in struggling rural areas where jobs were hard to come by. When the state cut them off, their health worsened and many lost jobs, as well as the ability to work new ones. Nobody on Medicaid was free from the tumult. Despite outreach from the state, there was widespread panic, as people didn't know if they had the type of Medicaid that the new requirements applied to. People received confusing 10-page letters from the state Medicaid office, which often contradicted other coverage letters people received around the same time. The website to report compliance shut down every night at 9 p.m., and when it was running, it was so complex that we put together video tutorials to help people navigate it successfully. (Many still couldn't.) People spent hours on the phone or at agency offices trying to figure out their status or fix errors, often needing a lawyer's help. In some cases, they had to pester their employers for extra proof of wages or statements that met the state's requirements. All told, 18,164 people were terminated because of noncompliance with the work requirements, and thousands more people lost coverage because of related paperwork burdens. What's more, these penalties operated as a tax on key economic sectors. Hospitals and health clinics, many already barely surviving in rural areas, assumed additional costs to untangle billing nightmares, absorb more uncompensated care and help confused patients document their eligibility for coverage. Local nonprofits, including services for the homeless, domestic violence shelters, food banks, soup kitchens and senior centers, spent their scarce resources trying to help people comply. Pharmacists dealt with the desperation of people learning for the first time that they had lost coverage and would have to pay out of pocket for their prescriptions. The state Medicaid agency also bent under the weight. Agency management sloughed off the thankless and time-consuming tasks of cleaning up endless system errors, figuring out workarounds and calming frantic people to overburdened caseworkers. At one point, the state's call centers were so overwhelmed that the agency expanded its hours of operation, which still didn't prevent lengthy wait times. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
