How should the government police the health-care industry? That question is before the Supreme Court on Tuesday as the justices hear arguments in an important case about the False Claims Act.
Under the law as interpreted in most of the country, any time a health-care provider submits a bill to the government -- which is to say, millions of times a day -- the provider can be sued for a false claim if it’s failed to follow any of the myriad state and federal regulations governing the field. The law is meant to encourage citizens to blow the whistle on fraud, so it lets anyone bring a claim with the promise of receiving statutory damages up to three times the cost of the violation.
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