30
votes
How one doctor in the USA keeps practicing, despite a long string of sanctions, fines, and lawsuits
Link information
This data is scraped automatically and may be incorrect.
- Title
- Unstoppable: This Doctor Has Been Investigated at Every Level of Government. How Is He Still Practicing?
- Authors
- Annie Waldman
- Word count
- 4489 words
Ok. So, it’s a very long article and I probably got half way thought out. It starts out with a common failing I see with health/medicine related articles, that being a one sided complaint from the patient's (or family’s) perspective without any of the nuance that is needed. For example, it goes into detail about patients bleeding and suffering complications such as amputations. However, the type of procedures performed are vascular, so these complications are not unexpected. Moreover, the patients that go into these procedures generally have significant vascular disease and are generally high risk for any complication, including death.
That said. Once it starts making a case against the doctor it gets interesting. He got in trouble for performing experimental treatment on patients (so far unsuccessful treatment of MS) without proper institutional oversight. That’s a huge violation.
He was also accused of basically treating patients like cattle and funneling though repeated and unnecessary procedure to get more money from insurance/medicare. That’s also huge.
Interestingly, he had to undertake an ethics course, which he failed. Lol. He couldn’t even pretend to be ethical and instead berated the “establishment” for not understanding what he was doing. He sounds like a crack pot and should definitely not be practicing medicine.
It's very common these days for investigative journalism about organizations and practices to start off covering one person's story first so there's more context about the reporting to show the extent of the damage that is happening. In fact, I can't really think of one that doesn't do something like this.
Common, yes, but I dislike it. IMO this practice stems from an Editor or Publisher wanting a “dramatic hook” for “engagement” rather than relying on the importance of the story and having an intelligent audience.
Just write the story, don’t muddy the narrative with insipid unrelated drama- that actually weakens the argument. It sounds like this egomaniac grifter should be jailed- save the specific details of how bad particular procedures were for later. Make the scope and severity abundantly clear here. In short- pick your shot. This publisher has an editor that’s actively worsening their product.
That’s my shot.
Edit: of course it’s Propublica. I was going to read it, but their deliberate “both-sides-ing” fascism has driven me away.
is there a concrete example or examples of this you can point to?
I've generally been impressed by their reporting and haven't noticed that in the articles I've read, but it's possible I've missed something.
looking through their recent archive, of the ones that seem like they'd be the most prone to both-sides-ism, they've instead made clear that it's not a both-sides problem:
August 7: Bullied by Her Own Party, a Wisconsin Election Official’s GOP Roots Mean Nothing in Volatile New Climate
July 19: How School Board Meetings Became Flashpoints for Anger and Chaos Across the Country
July 13: Close to 100,000 Voter Registrations Were Challenged in Georgia — Almost All by Just Six Right-Wing Activists
I’m too lazy to dig out evidence, sorry- and I’m no expert. I did go read through their Wikipedia entry and saw its run by a former WSJ editor, was started by financiers, and has been supported by none other than SBF. I’m kind of on the fence about whether any of that is good, bad, or like most things, a mix of both.
Their journalism awards and dedication to breaking several of the bigger stories over the last decade was really impressive though. I came away thinking I might have to readjust my attitude on them.
Those articles you listed actually made me think a bit more of them. Thank you.
saying that a news outlet is "both-sides-ing fascism" (and that they're doing it deliberately, no less) is a pretty serious accusation. please don't make it if you're not willing to back it up with anything.
it sounds like you mean this guy:
one thing to note is that he left the WSJ just before it was acquired by Rupert Murdoch in 2007.
the WSJ has always leaned conservative (particularly its editorial board), but the takeover by Murdoch was a very significant change. the 16 years he spent as managing editor was before the WSJ turned into the "Fox News with bigger words" that we see today.
and he appears to be very highly respected by other journalists, which counts for a lot in my book. I don't know his personal politics, but when I read this it doesn't exactly scream "conservative hack" to me:
but anyway, moving on from him:
specifically:
I hadn't heard of Golden West before, but reading up on it, it seems about as unobjectionable as a bank is ever likely to get:
they bought it in the 1960s, and ran it as a husband & wife co-CEO team for 40 years. it sounds like it was relatively progressive, for its time:
they retired in 2006, both in their 70s, selling the bank to Wachovia, and then of course the financial crisis happened.
from Marion's wiki page:
founding ProPublica, along with the Center for Responsible Lending, looks to me to be a sincere attempt to atone for the role they played in the mortgage bubble and financial crisis, and to take actual concrete steps to prevent that sort of harm from happening again.
yeah, I mean...ProPublica has also been supported by the Ford Foundation (Henry Ford was a gigantic anti-semite and Nazi sympathizer) and the Carnegie Foundation (Andrew Carnegie was a union-buster).
I share your skepticism of billionaire philanthropy (Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World is my go-to book recommendation on the subject) but in general the principle I try to follow is that if an organization is doing good work, I don't judge them based on their funding coming from sources I dislike. it sucks, but nonprofits basically have no choice but to "play the game" and seek out these donations from wealthy private philanthropists.
SBF also gave to the Campaign Legal Center, a political watchdog group I think does great work. the Ford Foundation donated a bunch to the NAACP in the 1960s. Carnegie built a bunch of libraries. I think we have to be able to separate the donor from the recipient and judge them separately. I have no qualms about judging SBF for trying to launder his reputation with charitable donations, but I don't think it necessarily taints every organization he donated to.
The Dickensian aspect.
Well said. That's handy shorthand.
It is! But I can't take credit: it's straight from The Wire. If you haven't seen it, I recommend it.
this is either the 5th or 8th paragraph, depending on whether you count single-line paragraphs:
that seems to me like it's doing a decent job of providing necessary context at the start of the article, showing that it's a systemic problem rather than just anecdotes about patients unsatisfied with outcomes.
not just accused - he admitted to it, in the 2018 federal settlement (the first link above). specifically, they admitted to a pattern of four years of ongoing Medicare fraud, across 22 clinics in 12 states:
and in the more recent federal case, from May of this year:
so he committed fraud between 2012 and 2016, got caught, admitted guilt in 2018 with a settlement that required him to pay between $4-18 million (depending on his clinic's finances)
and they're now alleging that not only did he keep doing fraud, but the other fraud was committed while his first fraud investigation was ongoing, and continued after he admitted guilt and settled the case.
nitpicky, but I don't think his medical license is the problem here, and I'd call him a fraudster or a grifter, rather than an outright crackpot. his malfeasance seems to be mostly about his actions as a businessman, running this chain of clinics, and not specifically about his actions as a practicing doctor.
by all means, they should revoke his medical license, but if they stop there it seems likely he'd just find another way to keep doing fraud.