In Case You Missed It — Healthcare Daily Digest for Tuesday, 15 January

It’s not that there’s ever been a great time to get caught committing insurance fraud, but what I am suggesting is that, with everyone on the verge of Joad-level poverty thanks to the rising cost of healthcare and the decreasing levels of money in our collective pockets (Spoiler Alert: 2013 is not, turns out, the year I’m going to be Oprah Wealthy), people are going to be a little more aware of financial shenanigans and goings on.

For instance: “Two healthcare administrators were sentenced Monday to state prison for their roles in a $154-million medical insurance fraud scheme in which thousands of healthy patients were recruited to undergo unnecessary surgeries to bill insurance providers, Orange County prosecutors said.”

The scam involved something called “Rent-a-Patient” — that aforementioned business of encouraging healthy people to get unnecessary surgery in order to bill insurance providers — along with a garden variety of other fraudulent activities: conspiracy, grand theft, insurance fraud.

The two defendents in this particular case — Dee Francis, 63, and Rosalinda Rodriguez Landon, 67 — will spend six years and five year, four months, respectively, in state prison.

Looking for more headlines? Read on!

• Stars: They’re Just Like the Rest of Us! Singer Lily Allen is crowdsourcing her child’s healthcare on Twitter because that’s a sound decision.

• Massachusetts Healthcare Grants: Partners HealthCare and Neighborhood Health Plan announced $4.25 million in grants to community health centers today.”

• Like Stealing Werthers From Your Grandpa: The Better Business Bureau is warning senior citizens to be aware of Medicare scams that are targeting the over-65 set.

• Clarifying Statements: Our old friends, North Carolina-based WakeMed, are now issuing a clarifying statement after their president and CEO, Bill Atkinson, suggested that he didn’t believe the hospital’s actions were criminal, but that “the federal government thinks they could certainly turn it that way.”

• Journalism Will Solve EVERYTHING! Our good friend Charles “Chuck” Lane (played thrillingly by Peter Sarsgaard in the movie Shattered Glass) asks, “But what if we try something simple, like journalism?” in answer to the question “How do we reduce the $500 billion a year cost of Medicare?”

• ‘Our Commitment To Medicare … Is Really Important’: President Obama touches on healthcare.

• Penalties for Individual Mandate Not Enough: Now there’s talk about something called Mandate Plus.

• Now with More Than Just Your Health Info?: “Federal government encouraged to incentivize collection of work health information as a part of meaningful use standards for EHRs.”