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  Budget cuts are making healthcare whistleblowers more important than ever. According to the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, thanks to cuts in the HHS budget, Medicare and Medicaid are about to have even fewer resources to fight fraud and abuse. The Center for Public Integrity obtained internal documents from HHS-OIG that discuss the effects budget cuts are about to have on Medicare's ability to defend itself against fraud in the medical field -- and the outlook is grim. In all, OIG is losing 400 employees - a full 20% of its staff - as a result of the cuts. Now that is a short-sighted plan. I don't know whether Congress or HHS is deciding where to place the cuts, but it is a huge mistake to cut funding from the branch of the agency devoted to getting money back in to Medicare and Medicaid coffers. As a whistleblower attorney, I can attest that there are brave men and women willing to risk their jobs to try to stop fraud. But these whistleb

  The   American Automobile Association (AAA)  conducted a very interesting study looking at newly-licensed teen drivers. Having observed a proportionally higher number of teen drivers causing car accidents, AAA decided to look at their driving behaviors. In   DistractedDrivingAmongNewlyLicensedTeenDriversPR.pdf , AAA reported on a study in which it had mounted cameras on the front windshields of teens' cars, videoing both facing outward, toward the front of the car, and also into the passenger compartment of the vehicle. AAA put several video clips on its web site.  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/   These clips show the teens engaging in risky driving behaviors. I have been using the videos to look at how   Georgia law on teenagers causing wrecks , or otherwise engaging in risky driving behaviors. I have been writing about the video of one boy in particular, so far. I will be addressing other videos in future entries. All of the videos scared me witless, but for some reason this o

  The Georgia Department of Transportation ("DOT") has given us some pretty serious food for thought about car wrecks in Georgia, in a report it issued in January 2008. The report,   Crash Analysis, Statistics & Incidents , has some very sobering facts about the car accidents occurring around Georgia, for people like me, a   Georgia car wreck attorney , and for all Georgians. 1. From 2000 to 2006, over 6 million people were involved in car accidents in Georgia. DOT reminds us that this means 2, 394 people are involved in car crashes every single day. 2. In that same period, one million people were injured in car or truck accidents in Georgia. 3. In a single week, 2,500 people are injured in car accidents on Georgia roads. 4. Even more tragically, 31 people die every week because they were in a car wreck somewhere in Georgia. 5. Between 2000 and 2006, 11,345 people died in car crashes in Georgia. 6. The most dangerous roads in Georgia are not the speedways through metropol

  Why do we have so many deadly car wrecks here in Atlanta? And what can we do to cut back on them? I practice law here in Atlanta, and I represent people who need an Atlanta   car accident lawyer . I have met with families who have been devastated because they lost someone they loved very dearly in a car crash, and I have seen people with serious injuries struggling to rebuild their physical health and deal with the crushing financial and emotional consequences of a serious personal injury from an auto collision. I have been blogging about the car accidents that happened in 2008 and 2009 (the latest data available) in order to see whether we can see trends that would help us cut back on these crashes. Today I will be talking about the deadly car crashes that happened in the city of Atlanta in November 2008. That month five people died in car accidents. Atlanta police attributed one of those five fatal car wrecks to a drunken driver. On November 2, 2008, an Atlanta driver died when he

  Tennessee universities are short on cash, and its students who are bailing them out. While Tennessee funded 55 percent of public college budgets in 2002, a decade later the state is only covering 30 percent, according The Tennessean. As a result, students are being crushed under a load of ever-increasing debt. Students at Middle Tennessee State University, for example, now have a cumulative student debt of $63 million - or $5 million more than the previous year. Meanwhile, scholarships are increasingly more difficult to come by. For college students lucky enough to find financial aid, many programs are covering smaller percentages of expenses. Despite threats by President Obama to withhold federal aid if colleges don't stop hiking costs, tuitions keep going up. Typical student debts can range anywhere from $10,000 to $100,000 by graduation time. When economic times are good, it's possible for new grads to pay the bills with an entry-level job. Unfortunately, today's econo

  According to the   Department of Justice press release , a Maryland nuclear cardiologist and his two companies double billed for myocardial perfusion studies, also known as nuclear stress tests. A federal court in the District of Columbia has entered a $17 million judgment against the three in a False Claims Act ("FCA") healthcare lawsuit. Health and Human Services' Office of the Inspector General apparently found this case itself, without the help of a whistleblower. I wrote recently about the problems that Medicare is going to face given recent, extreme budget cuts for OIG.  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/medicare-medicaid-fraud/   This case is precisely the type that will go undetected as OIG ramps down its enforcement efforts due to deep budget cuts. As OIG loses its ability to fight fraud, we are going to become more and more dependent on whistleblowers to keep Medicare and Medicaid from getting swindled. I am an attorney who represents whistleblowers, so I know th

  In a recent   study done for the Georgia Department of Transportation , which looked at incidents that occurred at 13 different exits along I-85, Jimmy Carter Boulevard had - by far -- the largest number of incidents. As a   car accident attorney , I have seen that a large number of car wrecks occur at that exit. Still, I was surprised at the extent to which the intersection has become a problem. The study looked at car accidents, stalled cars, and other traffic-snarling events. A whopping 21% of the incidents occurred at that one intersection. Clearly the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) needs to take a look at the Jimmy Carter intersection and see whether improvements can be made to make the intersection safer and less congested for drivers. The Study In 2011, the Georgia Department of Transportation (GDOT) converted a 16-mile stretch of HOV (high-occupancy vehicle) lane along I-85 into a HOT (high-occupancy toll) lane. The stretch of roadway runs through DeKalb County,

  Every year nearly 20 people die on Georgia's roads over the Fourth of July weekend. I want to urge all of my blog readers to be extremely careful as they hit the road this weekend for family day trips, vacations, and fireworks shows. A few months back I did some research for this Georgia car accident blog, and discovered to my surprise what a large number of people die in car wrecks over the various holiday weekends. I had assumed I might find a tragic number of people died in car crashes that happened over New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, and I did. But I had not expected to find that so many people were killed in auto wrecks on the other holiday weekends. To get the stats, I looked at the data collected by the National Highway Traffic & Safety Administration for 2009, the latest data available online.  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/  NHTSA collects data about fatal car accidents from all fifty states and the U.S. territories. The   Fatality Analysis Reporting Sys

  More people died in car crashes in December 2008 than in any other month of the year. In fact, the "contest" wasn't even close. Eleven people died in ten separate December car accidents here in Atlanta. The next worst month was April, when seven people died in collisions. Three of the collisions involved pedestrians Perhaps predictably, given the holiday season, Atlanta police said 3 of the 10 wrecks were caused by DUI drivers who were under the influence while driving. I am an Atlanta auto wreck lawyer, and I have been chronicling the 2008 and 2009 car accidents around Atlanta. I am up to December 2008. I am using the FARS database in order to get the data I am using. The month got off to a bad start, when a drunken driver caused a fatal, two-car collision here in Atlanta.  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/complex-litigation/   The accident happened at the corner of Boulevard Dr. and Hansell St. at 7:19 p.m., and Atlanta police listed the cause of the accident as being a

  According to a criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan, a Detroit doctor has been falsely diagnosing patients with cancer, just so he can give them chemotherapy and make money from doing that. I am a whistleblower lawyer, and I had so much to do today that I had decided I would skip blogging today. But then I read about this case, and was so shocked and infuriated that I just had to write. The accusation is so bizarre that I'll say it again.  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/medicare-medicaid-fraud/   The Complaint says that Dr. Fata of Michigan diagnosed patients with cancer, even though they did not have cancer, because he decided he would like to make more money. Apparently he couldn't drum up enough cancer patients who needed chemotherapy, so he invented a few. The Complaint is filed as a healthcare fraud indictment. The doctor is accused of defrauding Medicare because he billed for chemotherapy, PET scans and other cancer treatmen

  I live in Atlanta, Georgia and practice   Georgia personal injury law . I have been blogging about a legal concept called "spoliation", which is the destruction of legal evidence that could have been used in a lawsuit. I started off with a legal blog entry talking about the law and its origins, and then in a second blog entry I discussed   O.C.G.A. § 24-4-22 , the  https://askcompetentlawyer.com/complex-litigation/  Georgia statute about spoliation. In my third personal injury blog post on spoliation, I talked about the reason that courts punish spoliation, and in the fourth I discussed the court's concern that a party not be charged with spoliation if the party did not have custody or control of the evidence. In today's entry, I want to talk about what happens when a party is accused of spoliation. In legal matters, courts sometimes grant summary judgment, meaning the court decides before the jury trial starts that the law is so clear on an issue that the issue sim

  I handle Atlanta   car wreck lawsuits , and I have been blogging about the statistics on car wrecks here in our city. I am using data from the FARS ("Fatality Analysis Reporting System") system, as reported on   City-Data.com , to see whether we can identify some trends and weaknesses in the road system here in Atlanta. From the 2009 data, we can see that some roads were particularly dangerous for Atlanta drivers. Some of the findings were pretty obvious. You would expect a number of deadly crashes on the heavily-traveled, multi-lane highways around Atlanta, and the data confirms the problem. Deadly car crashes occurred on all of the major highways around Atlanta. Two people died on the multi-lane road SR-400. Two more were killed along I-285 / SR-407, which runs around the city. I-75, another enormous, multi-lane road that crosses the city from southeast to northwest, saw five car wrecks that caused deaths. Four more deaths from car accidents occurred along I-85, which run

  More people died in car crashes in December 2008 than in any other month of the year. In fact, the "contest" wasn't even close. Eleven people died in ten separate December car accidents here in Atlanta. The next worst month was April, when seven people died in collisions. Three of the collisions involved pedestrians Perhaps predictably, given the holiday season, Atlanta police said 3 of the 10 wrecks were caused by DUI drivers who were under the influence while driving. I am an Atlanta auto wreck lawyer, and I have been chronicling the 2008 and 2009 car accidents around Atlanta. I am up to December 2008. I am using the FARS database in order to get the data I am using. The month got off to a bad start, when a drunken driver caused a fatal, two-car collision here in Atlanta. The accident happened at the corner of Boulevard Dr. and Hansell St. at 7:19 p.m., and Atlanta police listed the cause of the accident as being a driver who was DUI. Two days later, on December 3, 20

  Will Pennsylvania get a new - albeit somewhat half-hearted - False Claims Act? Two legislators are urging the State to adopt a   Pennsylvania False Claims Act   that would at least allow the state to recover for health care fraud against the state. As a whistleblower lawyer who handles False Claims Act suits, I would like to congratulate the bill's sponsors for taking a step that just plain makes sense. https://askcompetentlawyer.com/fraud/  First, putting a stop to fraud is an obvious no-brainer. Bill sponsor State Rep. Brandon Neuman pointed out that the bill "would deter fraud and punish wrongdoers, and "raise significant revenues through recovered losses and other damages." Why would Pennsylvania -- or any other state -- not want to do that? Rep. Neuman also noted that if the state passed the statute, it would allow the state to get a 10% increase in the amount of money they receive for Medicaid recoveries. Representative Neuman was talking about 42 U.S.C. § 13

  I've written in some of my earlier blog posts that my oldest child will be a teen driver within the next year or two. The idea terrifies me! So although I write this blog as an   auto accident lawyer , I have a special and very personal reason to research the rules and regulations that apply to teen drivers here in Georgia. Speaking as a parent, I am happy to report that Georgia has a special rule about texting and cell phone use for teenage drivers. Under a law that took effect on July 1, 2010, drivers under the age of 18 are not allowed to "[e]ngage in a wireless communication." O.C.G.A. § 40-6-241.1. https://askcompetentlawyer.com/  The law does have several exceptions, mostly for emergency situations. What are Georgia's teenage drivers not allowed to do? For those teenagers who are future lawyers and think maybe they have some room to negotiate about what exactly "engage in" means, or just what counts as "a wireless communication," the statut

  The FBI is accusing a Chicago hospital of taking Medicare fraud and Medicaid fraud to an appalling level. According to FBI allegations about the Medicare and Medicaid fraud, secret tape recordings prove that doctors at Sacred Heart Hospital in Chicago intentionally sedated patients so much during surgery that the patients could not breathe on their own. The doctors then used the fact that the patients were not breathing on their own to justify performing lucrative tracheotomies on the patients. A doctor does a tracheotomy - that is to say, cuts a hole into the patient's throat, directly into the windpipe - to open up a direct breathing passage for a patient who otherwise cannot breathe on his or her own. The Government made its allegations in a criminal complaint. To date no False Claims Act case has been unsealed, so we do not know whether a whistleblower filed a lawsuit and alerted the Government to what the doctors were doing. If a whistleblower is the one who uncorked the bot