IMPORTANT FACTS

1. With mental health care insurance coverage being mandated in the U.S., fraud levels are expected to escalate.

2. Drug abuse and drug fraud are common occurrences among psychiatrists.

3. Community Mental Health Centers (CMHC) have not saved money as promised, but, on the contrary, led to massive increases in government spending and fraud, with no commensurate results.

4. In Japan, psychiatric facility staff falsified patient records and inflated the numbers of treating doctors and nurses to extort more money from the government.

New Jersey psychologist Carl Lichtman pleaded guilty to defrauding 36 insurance carriers of $3.5 million for therapy sessions that never took place. In May 1996, he was also ordered to reimburse the insurance companies $2.8 million and $200,000 to the state Department of Insurance.

CHAPTER TWO Cunning Psychiatric Fraud

With mental health care insurance coverage in the United States being mandated through state and national legislation, and psychiatrists pushing for all children and adults to be �screened for mental illnesses during their routine physical exams,� fraud levels can only be expected to escalate.

Speaking about mental health fraud, Paul McDevitt, a Massachusetts counselor, said, �These people have no ethics at all. They�re morally bankrupt. They�re like the grave robbers in old England who provided cadavers for the medical schools.�
Except that in the case of psychiatrists and psychologists, the people that they�re exploiting are still alive.

In a 1997 article on psychiatric fraud, Mark Schlein, the director of Florida�s Medicaid Insurance, stated: �What we�ve discovered is that the extent of the fraud is limited only by the imagination. We�ve discovered a huge variety of fraudulent schemes.�

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