What does this Florida teenager advertising his medical services while sporting a lab coat and stethoscope not have? A medical degree.

Malachi A. Love-Robinson, an 18-year-old, even had his own medical office in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Officials arrested Love-Robinson Tuesday after the Palm Beach Narcotics Task Force (PBNTF) and the Florida Department of Health investigated complaints that the “doctor” was practicing medicine without a license, according to a statement released by the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office.

Just because you saw a season of Grey’s Anatomy doesn’t mean you could practice medicine. https://t.co/tw8QUXjtsj pic.twitter.com/dCBZX8CYCU

— PBSO (@PBCountySheriff) February 16, 2016

The sheriff’s office also said that Love-Robinson had been investigated previously and was cited by the Department of Health for practicing medicine without a license this past October. According to Brad Dalton, the spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, Love-Robinson was worked at New Birth New Life, a treatment office specializing in addiction recovery, in Boynton Beach, Fla. Practicing medicine without a license is considered a third-degree felony in Florida.

The police were apparently tipped off by a member of the public who told the authorities that “a person who was portraying himself as a 25-year-old doctor was actually an 18-year-old,” Brad Dalton told the New York Times. According to his profile on HealthGrades.com, which has since been taken down, he was listed as a 25-year-old.

Love-Robinson posted bail on Wednesday and on Thursday he told ABC News, “I’m not portraying as an M.D. I never said I’ve gone to school to be an M.D.” He also claims that he has a Ph.D., but would not say where it is from or what field it is in.

The statement from the sheriff’s office says that Love-Robinson “performed a physical exam on an undercover agent and offered medical advice.” The point in time when Love-Robinson crossed the line to provide medical care and advice was when police were able to intervene, Dalton told CNN.

According to New Birth New Life’s website, Love-Robinson is listed as having not only a Ph.D. but also two certifications: HHP-C, which is a holistic health practitioner certification, and AMP-C, which is unclear.

There are two other employees listed, an operations director and a program director. The program director, Sandra J. White, is titled “Dr.,” but it is unclear if that title stems from the honorary doctorate of divinity that she received according to her bio on the NBNL website, or if from an educational institution.

The bio for Michelle L. Newsome, the operations director, says, “[Newsome] is looking forward to many years here at NBNL Medical Center and hopes to enjoy each and every one of them.”

Love-Robinson was also accused of forging and cashing stolen checks from an 86-year-old woman in January and was charged with Grand Theft, Uttering a Forgery, and Naturopath without a License, according to an update posted to the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office Facebook page.

The elderly women reportedly filed a forgery and fraud report after she was notified that her bank account had no money in it. “The victim obtained copies of her checks and learned that three had been forged and cashed by Dr. Love-Robinson without her consent or knowledge,” the post said.

Love-Robinson disagrees with the police and is unhappy that he was forced to close down his practice following the accusations. “I’m not trying to hurt people,” he told the New York Times. “I’m just a young black guy who opened up a practice who is trying to do some good in the community. If that is a negative thing, we have a lot more work to do in the community than to single out me.”

Julia Bryant

Julia Bryant is an Editorial Senior Fellow at Law Street from Howard County, Maryland. She is a junior at the University of Maryland, College Park, pursuing a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Economics. You can contact Julia at JBryant@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Florida Teen Still Not a Doctor, But Still Pretending appeared first on Law Street.

Imagine being told you have a potentially fatal disease and going through weeks of expensive treatments and stress. Then you find out you were intentionally misdiagnosed. This is the nightmare that 553 patients are experiencing after Michigan-based Dr. Farid Fata purposely misdiagnosed them with various types of cancer so that he could make more money. The unnecessary treatments they received amounted to 9,000 injections and infusions that cost the insurance companies and patients millions.

One by one, patients confront doctor who falsely diagnosed them with cancer http://t.co/lgC88qbYai pic.twitter.com/EInUjqYHe1

— CBS News (@CBSNews) July 8, 2015

For example, Robert Sobieray, a 62-year-old disabled autoworker, was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer by Fata in 2010. Sobieray claims the treatments he endured caused his body to uncontrollably twitch and his teeth to fall out. When Fata was arrested in 2013 for healthcare fraud Sobieray went to another doctor who told him he actually never had the disease. Sobieray stated:

I have so much hatred towards Fata. His name causes an instant headache. He gets my stomach turning. It is hard to explain…the things I want to do to that guy I couldn’t say in public. I hope he gets life.

It’s easy to imagine that the other patients feel as similarly betrayed as Sobieray. As his patients were fearing death, the 50-year-old doctor was running seven upscale clinics and then going home to rest in his comfy Michigan mansion. After undergoing countless aggressive and unnecessary treatments many of his patients now do have health issues. Victims said the cancer treatments Fata gave them caused problems such as hair loss, depression, and high blood pressure, among others.

this doctor lied an told healthy people they had cancer so he could make money….this is the world we live in.

— tayrn. (@_annakae) July 7, 2015

This doctor who lied to his patients saying they had cancer just so he can get more money from treatments, appts, etc makes me sick

— Briana Lafontaine (@brilafontaine) July 7, 2015

In addition to misdiagnosing people, Fata also never told those who were terminally ill that they were dying. This led patients who were close to death to continue buying treatments–making him more money. They thought that their health was improving while it simply was not. “Some of these terminal patients never knew they were dying because of Fata’s lies,” prosecutors stated in a sentencing memo. Cheryl Blades said when her mother Nancy LaFrance had a recurrence of lung cancer, the surgeon told her that chemo would not help. However, Dr. Fata had different beliefs. Blades claims

He told my mother he was going to cure her. He promised her. He said you will see your youngest granddaughter graduate from high school. And none of that happened.

In September Dr. Fata pleaded guilty to health care fraud, money laundering, and conspiring to pay and receive kickbacks. Federal prosecutors are asking that he gets a 175 year sentence, while his attorney is trying to lower it to only 25 years. His hearing began Monday, and may last all week. Several of Fata’s victims have been giving statements in court this week on their changed lives–hopefully Fata’s sentencing will ultimately provide some closure and peace to his victims.

Taelor Bentley

Taelor is a member of the Hampton University Class of 2017 and was a Law Street Media Fellow for the Summer of 2015. Contact Taelor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Michigan Doctor Misdiagnoses Patients to Make Extra Cash appeared first on Law Street.

College alone these days is very expensive. Now, add grad school on to that, and I don’t care what you are going to make in the profession in which you were just trained, you are going to be in a whole lot of debt when you get out of school. Then, you have to go through the whole resume, interview process. And let’s face it, that is no fun. Which is why I think the teenager in the following story has the right idea: just skip the schooling portion of job placement. And while you are at it, just skip through the whole application process too. How do you do that? Just show up to the place you want to work, and blend in. Probably no one will ask you if you are supposed to be there.

Courtesy of Giphy.

To learn more, let’s examine St. Mary’s Medical Center in, of course, Florida–because that is where all these stories happen. A young doctor was recently escorted out of the building by security because, well he wasn’t actually a doctor so much as a teenage boy wearing a doctor’s coat.

Ok. Well, he tried and didn’t succeed. The way security is these days and the importance of safe hospitals means you couldn’t get away with such a scam for very long.  I mean, like in this story, the kid only got away with posing as a doctor for about 20 or 30…days. That is right. A month.

To be fair to the hospital, he didn’t actually work with patients in his month on staff. In fact, it was when he stepped up his game and actually went into an exam room, with a stethoscope around his neck and a mask on his face, and introduced himself as Doctor Robinson (and didn’t follow it with “I’m not a doctor, I only play one on TV”), that he got caught.

One of the real doctors noticed him and thought something wasn’t right. So he called security, who was surprised that the kid was faking it–as they had seen him around the last few weeks and thought he belonged there.

Here is the thing about this story that makes me feel a little bad about making fun of it: the kid, according to his mother, had an illness for which he had stopped taking medication. And I cannot joke about that. However, here is the part that make me feel perfectly fine joking about it: we know the kid’s excuse for doing this. What was the hospital’s excuse for not catching this kid faster? That I can make fun of.  And that is probably a big part of why the center will not be pressing charges.

This story has been told far and wide, and there is a good chance you have already heard about it. So you might be asking yourself just why I didn’t make that one obvious connection that everyone is making. And I will tell you why. Because everyone is making it, and I want to be a little more unique than that. So I will not say a word. I’ll just leave you with this picture, which will say a thousand words for me:

Courtesy of FanPop.

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Doctor Who? Teen Tricks Hospital For an Entire Month appeared first on Law Street.

If you are going to a pharmacy for a particular drug, you’re often offered a choice — do you want the name brand or the cheaper generic? Generics have long been lauded for their ability to provide the same benefits to patients while also offering a less hefty price tag; however, recently generics have been getting more expensive, and people are wondering why. Congress announced this week that it’s going to launch an investigation into why the price of generic drugs is rising.

When a drug company develops a particular drug, it gets to hold the patent for approximately twenty years (some nations or jurisdictions give protections for a bit longer). During that period, that company is the only one that can produce that particular drug. After the patent expires, however, other companies can make a “generic” version of the drug.

There are certain regulations created by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make sure that the generic drugs are able to be distributed. The FDA requires that a generic drug has the same active ingredients as the one that it is imitating, but not necessarily the same inactive ingredients (such as coloring). A generic has to perform the same function as the name brand, and it must of course meet the same health and safety standards.

Generic drugs tend to be less expensive than the name brands — and given the high cost of American health care, offer great and affordable options for consumers. However, it seems like the cost of these drugs is increasing. For example, the patent for Ambien, a popular sleep aid, recently expired. Now it’s a lot easier to get a generic version of Ambien for a cheaper price, and more people are able to get the product they need.

A study completed in August discovered that some generic prices have been dropping, while others have been rising almost exponentially. According to the Wall Street Journal:

The prices paid by pharmacies more than doubled for one out of 11 generics. And in a few cases – notably, the tetracycline antibiotic and the captopril blood pressure pill – the cost increases not only exceeded 1,000%, but topped 17,000%…. Yes, 17,000%.

Doctors have reported how troubling this kind of price increase can be in certain generic drugs for the patients who rely on them. Some patients who are on fixed incomes, such as those on Medicaid, may not be able to pay for the non-covered costs of the drugs if prices skyrocket that much. They may try to skip their prescriptions in an attempt to make ends meet. Not only is this obviously problematic for the patients themselves, but it also leads to more emergency room visits and a less healthy society in general.

That brings us to the investigation that Congress is evidently undertaking to try to figure out why exactly these generic prices are climbing so sharply and how to reverse the trend. The analysis is being pushed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland. We can all say a lot about the inadequacies of Congress, but this is a good move on its part. It’s really important that we get the prices of generics under control, because price increases like this are almost always passed directly to the consumer. With as many healthcare problems as we have, this is an issue that needs to be nipped in the bud as soon as possible.

—

Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [Chris Potter/Stockmonkeys.com via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Congress to Investigate Rising Generic Drug Costs appeared first on Law Street.