Sessions and his Department of Justice have announced that they will charge 601 people, including those in the medical field, for their part in the opioid addiction facing our country today.
They revealed this week that this is part of their efforts to take down schemes of health care scams across the country. This includes 76 doctors, 23 pharmacists, 19 nurses, and hundreds of others who were all involved in the distributing and false-prescribing of opioids such as oxycodone.
In one example, the owner of a Texas-based pharmacy chain and two co-conspirators filled scripts for more than 1 million oxycodone and hydrocodone pills, which were subsequently transferred to couriers for sale on the street.
I’m still not sure where to land with Sessions in regards to the anti-Trump things that has been getting revealed from behind the scenes of several agencies but this is one action that I think we can all support.
As reported by NBC News:
The arrests came as part of what the department said was the largest health care fraud takedown in U.S. history and included 162 doctors and other suspects charged for their roles in prescribing and distributing addictive opioid painkillers.
“Some of our most trusted medical professionals look at their patients — vulnerable people suffering from addiction — and they see dollar signs,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said.
The arrests came as part of an annual fraud takedown overseen by the Justice Department. The crackdown resulted in authorities bringing dozens of unrelated cases involving alleged frauds that cost government health care programs and insurers more than $2 billion.
Officials sought in the latest crackdown to emphasize their efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the epidemic caused more than 42,000 deaths from opioid overdoses in the United States in 2016.
In a report released on Thursday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General said about 460,000 patients covered by Medicare received high amounts of opioids in 2017 and 71,000 were at risk of misuse or overdose.