By Aanchal Sinha,News18

Copyright news18

Indian-origin doctor Neil K. Anand, who was found guilty of health care fraud in the US earlier this year, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for pushing his patients to accept goody bags of sedatives that they did not need, to claim insurance payments.
The 48-year-old Pennsylvania-based doctor was also ordered to pay more than $2 million in restitution and an additional $2 million in forfeiture.
The investigation revealed multiple irregularities: besides administering unnecessary medications to patients, he also pre-signed prescriptions that allowed his interns with no license to prescribe medicines, and wrote controlled substances.
According to court documents and evidence presented at trial, Dr Anand conspired to submit false and fraudulent claims to health plans provided by Medicare, the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Independence Blue Cross (IBC), and Anthem, for “Goody Bags” of medically unnecessary prescription medications, which were dispensed to patients by in-house pharmacies owned by Anand, Times of India reported.
In total, Medicare, OPM, IBC, and Anthem paid over $2.4 million in reimbursements.
Anand also conspired to distribute oxycodone outside the usual course of medical practice and without a legitimate medical purpose, to entice patients to take the unwanted Goody Bags. Unlicensed medical interns filled in prescriptions for controlled substances on blank forms pre-signed by Anand. Under this scheme, Anand prescribed a total of 20,850 oxycodone tablets for nine patients.
When Anand found out he was being investigated, he moved roughly $1.2 million into an account under a relative’s name, intended to benefit a minor family member, in an attempt to conceal the fraud proceeds.
Dr Anand and his family denied the allegations, saying that his compassion for patients was unfairly criminalised. He had treated victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001 and later served as a physician in the US Navy.
“The law has spoken for now, but the deeper questions remain: What is healing? What is justice? Where’s the line between mercy and misconduct?” TOI quoted Anand as saying.
According to US District Judge Chad F Kenney, Anand had grown to be motivated by greed and illicit profits and not the needs of his patients. “For you, their pain was your gain,” Kenney said. “You were not focused during this period on treating your patients.”
In 2019, Dr Anand was charged, and as his trial went on for years, several groups on social media claimed that he became a victim of government propaganda and sought support. “The government is using artificial intelligence and manipulated data to prosecute me for treating chronic pain patients, turning tools meant to help into weapons against doctors,” Dr Anand wrote earlier in a blog seeking support.