Medicare receipts might have been doctored

According to federal authorities, two local doctors and a bunch of Kansas City businessmen have been charged with a multimillion dollar fraud scheme to bill Medicare for expensive motorized wheelchairs for patients who didn't need them and a few who didn't even get the wheelchairs.

Four men who owned or operated medical supply businesses - Godwin Iloka, 38, of Lee's Summit; Raphael Igbokwe, 49, of Kansas City; his brother Kennedy Igbokwe, a 27-year-old Nigerian citizen; and Roland Edomobi - and two doctors - Amazair McAllister, 48, of Blue Springs, and Ambrose Wotorson, 70, of Kansas City - were charged in a criminal complaint filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Kansas City and unsealed Thursday. They are accused of defrauding Medicare of more than $2.3 million.

And here's the thing, people once respected doctors, they looked up to those in the medical profession. And now, not so much. I don't know anybody who doesn't believe that a hospital or a nurse or a doctor was somehow involved in murdering a relative. We all hear stories about over worked nurses or a doctor with thousands of patients that they see in between visits to their mistress. I know that the first thing people might note when reading this story is the (allegedly) crooked African medical supply businesses men who could have been behind this scam but it's important to realize that the entire medical system is set up in such a manner that many people cut corners to make a buck. I've been to hospitals and I've seen nurses with bloodshot eyes who have seen far too many shifts in a row. I don't blame them but I know there is an executive somewhere that crunched the numbers, did a cost/benefit analysis and discovered that is was profitable to overwork the poor lady no matter how much danger it poses to her or her patients.

Nationalized healthcare sounds like a commie idea but look at the alternative. Whether it's an over worked nurse or a pharmacist who wants to increase his pay by selling water to cancer sufferers, with a medical system that is based on the bottom line there is just no way to completely trust medical providers . . . especially not with your life.