Posted by Bill Sandweg on 25 July 2016.
I have written about doctor fraudsters in the past. You can find some of the posts here and here. Doctor fraud is the worst form of medical malpractice. One of the most egregious doctor fraudsters was Dr. Farid Fata, an oncologist from Michigan. While some fraudsters create fake patients or bill Medicare for treatments never performed, Dr. Fata went way beyond that. He told perfectly healthy patients that they had deadly cancer and then proceeded to administer unnecessary chemotherapy to them. As many of you probably know, the principle of chemotherapy is to poison the cancer to death without poisoning the patient to death. It is not a pleasant process for the patient. Most chemotherapy agents cause the patient’s hair to fall out and makes the patient violently ill and weak. The treatments go on for months at a time. Chemotherapy together with the dread of having cancer is not something you would wish on your worst enemy. Dr. Fata did it for money.
When he was finally caught, he was prosecuted by the federal government for Medicare fraud. The feds have identified 553 victims of his scheme so far but believe there may be many more. The judge threw the book at him. He is currently serving a 45 year sentence in federal prison.
In addition to prosecuting him, the federal government seized $12 million of his personal assets. Some of that money was used to repay the government for his fraud. Some of it will be used to fund a restitution program for the victims. That remains to be done in the future. This week a state court judge approved the settlement of the claims of 43 patients of Dr. Fata. The patients had sued Dr. Fata, his oncology group, and three hospitals at which he practiced and where he administered chemotherapy. The total settlement amount for the 43 patients is only $8 million. An arbitrator will hold hearings later to decide how to divide the $8 million among the 43 patients. If evenly divided, that is less than $187,000.00 per patient. How many of you would undergo the pain, nausea and fear that Dr. Rata’s patients experienced for $8 million, much less for $187,000.00?
The settlement is so low because of a number of policies put in place by the state of Michigan to make it harder for patients injured by medical negligence, no matter how egregious, to recover for their injuries. The Arizona legislature has created similar impediments which harm injured patients and protect negligent doctors. Michigan law does not require a doctor to carry malpractice insurance but if he does it only requires that it be in the amount of $200,000.00 per claim. The Michigan legislature has also imposed caps on awards for pain and suffering, which covered all of the pain, suffering and mental anguish of the patients whom Dr. Fata told had deadly cancer and whom he subjected to chemotherapy. Those limits were established in the 1990’s and set at $440,000.00 per claim. Despite the effects of inflation, they have never been raised. That is the limit if your child or unemployed spouse is killed by a negligent doctor. Your loved ones have little or no value and doctors and hospitals must be protected at all costs.
It is hard to understand how the public benefits when doctors and hospitals are protected from the people they injure. The federal government seized $12 million in personal assets from Dr. Rata. You know he made lots more than that as a result of his scheme to lie to his patients and force chemotherapy on them solely to line his own pockets. The message to injured patients in Michigan is clear: Suck it up and stop complaining. Meanwhile uncaring doctors and wealthy hospitals are laughing all the way to the bank.
