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A concluding question in the article by Freeman et al¹ published in a recent issue of the ARCHIVES—"Are physicians as willing to deceive in practice when faced with the possibility of civil or criminal sanctions?"—should be addressed more thoroughly. Physicians may not realize that knowingly deceiving third-party payers violates a federal law being used with increasing frequency against the health care industry—the federal False Claims Act (31USC, 3729-3733 [1863]).²

The False Claims Act was originally enacted by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 during the American Civil War at a time when unscrupulous individuals were also engaged in practices of "sanctioning deception" by selling damaged goods to the US military. Provisions of this Act have been expanded and its use extended to health care providers who are similarly engaged in misrepresenting the goods and services provided to Medicare, Medicaid, and other third-party payers.

There have been substantial civil, criminal, and administrative . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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RELATED ARTICLE

Lying for Patients: Physician Deception of Third-Party Payers
Victor G. Freeman, Saif S. Rathore, Kevin P. Weinfurt, Kevin A. Schulman, and Daniel P. Sulmasy
Arch Intern Med. 1999;159(19):2263-2270.
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