A whistleblower who charged overbilling of several state Medicaid programs by a drug store chain has settled the suit for $975,000. Haroon Aziz, a pharmacy technician, raised questions about billings to state Medicaid programs and, as a result he claimed in his suit, was fired. The drug store chain CVS settled the case claiming that it had fraudulently billed Medicaid for prescriptions that had already been covered by other insurance.
Source: San Francisco Examiner
The federal False Claims Act is what applies to this whistleblower case. The False Claims Act creates an incentive for employees to report fraud perpetrated on a federal government program or a program that receives federal monies as do all state Medicaid programs. The whistleblower can recover 15-25% of the monies received from the wrongdoing corporation. The False Claims Act also outlaws any retaliation against the employee who has tried to stop or otherwise reported the fraud.
