Posted on 10/21/2010 6:56:30 AM PDT by Jenny Hatch
“Jenny they’ve got your number...”
YOUR tax dollars at work:
“Miami Psychiatrist Who Wrote 96,685 Prescriptions for Psychiatric Drugs in 21 Months Prompts Calls for Federal Investigation”
Based on the huge numbers of prescriptions written by a Miami psychiatrist, Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, is continuing to pressure federal officials to investigate why some doctors write stunning numbers of scripts for tax-funded Medicare and Medicaid programs.
In his latest volley, a letter sent Wednesday to Kathleen Sebelius, secretary for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Grassley demanded exact answers to three pointed questions about what her department is doing to address the problem.
The federal government has an obligation to figure out whats going on here, Grassley said in a statement e-mailed to The Miami Herald Wednesday. The taxpayers are footing the bill, and Medicare and Medicaid are already strained to the limit. These programs cant spare a dollar for prescription drugs that arent properly prescribed.
The conclusion might be that there isnt any fraud, but its important to reach a conclusion one way or the other and fix whatever is broken, Grassley said.
In the Sebelius letter, Grassley said his concern was triggered by a Florida provider who wrote 96,685 prescriptions for mental health drugs in a 21-month period. The letter did not identify the provider, but state records confirm that it is Fernando Mendez-Villamil, a psychiatrist with an office on Coral Way.
State Medicaid records independently obtained by The Herald show that over a two-year period Mendez-Villamil wrote almost twice as many prescriptions for mental health drugs as the No. 2 Medicaid prescriber in the state.
Robert N. Pelier, attorney for Mendez-Villamil, said Wednesday he and his client learned about the letter only after receiving a call from The Herald. He said the psychiatrist tried to reach Grassleys office when his prescription numbers were made public to give the proper context to the doctors prescription patterns and why he is an intricate part in the community. Pelier said he had not received a response from Grassley.
What my client believes is that hes been a victim of this health care debate, the attorney said. The majority of his prescriptions are expensive because theyre cutting-edge pharmaceuticals.
Pelier said Mendez-Villamil has been recently terminated from the Medicaid program and is now seeing some patients for free. We are pursuing legal action against AHCA Agency for Health Care Administration for the improper termination of doctor Mendez-Villamil from Medicaid, he said. The lawsuit was filed late July.
Meanwhile Ryan Wiggins, spokesman for the Florida Office of the Attorney General, confirmed there is an ongoing investigation into Mendez-Villamil that involves complicated issues of medical necessity We cannot comment further at this time.
Last December, Grassleys office calculated Mendez-Villamils numbers meant this physician wrote approximately 153 prescriptions each and every day, assuming he did not take vacations.
Earlier this year, Mendez-Villamil told The Herald that he works long hours and often gives each patient four or five prescriptions, accounting for the large numbers.
In April, Grassley wrote to all state Medicaid agencies requesting data about certain mental health drugs. On Wednesday, Grassleys office said the Florida provider identified by The Herald as Mendez-Villamil had the second-highest number of prescriptions in the nation for the generic form of Xanax in the data they analyzed.
The Wednesday letter also noted that the top Zyprexa provider in Florida wrote 1,356 prescriptions for 309 individuals in 2008 and 1,238 for 236 in 2009. The Herald independently verified from state data that this provider was Mendez-Villamil, and he wrote more than twice as many Zyprexa prescriptions as the No. 2 provider in the state.
I want to be clear that none of the information provided suggests any illegal or wrongful behavior, Grassley wrote. But such huge numbers might also suggest overutilization or even health care fraud. The only way to determine veracity is through appropriate oversight by Health and Human Services and continued monitoring by the Congress and the Senate Finance committee.
The ODD Kids are now the bosses - and want to stop any others in their tracks. :)
It fools the stupid union goons. It fools the liberal man haters.
It fools the stupid dependent who support them... and it goes without saying that it fools the MSM - who will buy ANYTHING that give them a pass for their biased, one-sided hatred of all things traditional...
And people like us? We know the intellectual rationalizations used against the Jews in Hitler's Germany. Those elites believed it too - even members of their most respected psychiatric associations...Doctors were part of Hitler's horror team...
Sorry guys - we understand self serving... we understand totalitarians.
1. This diagnosis is listed under the category: “Disorders Usually First Diagnosed in Infancy, Childhood, or Adolescence”. We all know the kind of kid they're talking about here.
2. I've never seen the diagnosis carried over into adulthood: usually this evolves into a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, an “Axis II Disorder,” ie not a “major psychiatric disorder” of the sort that can be used to bring one to the attention of the authorities for detention or commitment.
3. I've never seen anyone admitted to a hospital, voluntary or otherwise because of this diagnosis alone: a major Axis I psychiatric disorder that leads to danger to self or others or grave disability (inability to meet basic needs for health and safety) is required to get into a hospital: insurance otherwise won't pay for it, and courts certainly won't order it involuntarily. It may happen at some adolescent treatment facilities somewhere, but I've never seen it.
4. In Washington State where I practice now, the inability to carry concealed or buy a firearm is based on involuntary commitments due to major Axis I conditions, and is determined in court under due process, not at the whim of a psychiatrist.
5. By the time our political system has devolved to the point where people are denied possession of a gun on the sorts of grounds this post is concerned with, they won't need some trumped up charge to be confiscating them.
You are not looking at the whole picture here.
The DSM-IV does not say that anyone who questions or disobeys authority figures is mentally ill.
It regards a pathological attitude in which an individual only acknowledges authority if the authority rules in that person's favor and ignores or attacks authority figures if they are ruled against.
from above:
So now according to the ebook it states that:
The essential feature of Oppositional Defiant Disorder is a recurrent pattern of negativistic, defiant, disobedient, and hostile behavior toward authority figures that persists for at least 6 months.
I am opposed to everything that obama does. I have seen nothing he has done as being constitutional, or good for this country. Everything he does is against us. I do not expect my opinion to change on this. He has been in office for just under 2 years.
According to the definition given above, I am mentally diseased.
Do you doubt that the democrats would invoke such an interpretation to destroy their enemies? I don't. The socialists ALWAYS go down this path (See the Soviet Union mental health system)
There is an enormous difference between the mind that disobeys an illegal order or an unjust law as a reasoned act of civil engagement, and the mind that believes that no laws or rules apply to him and that he is free to disobey any authority or break any law if he feels he is being personally inconvenienced.
And there is no difference between how the democrats will repsond to the first and the second.
We saw in DSM-III how the APA is an entirely political organization (The de-listing of homosexuality as a mental illness was entirely political). I'd bet that most APA menbers are democrats and are manipulating the system to get rid of tehir opponents.
[snip]
So it is now Confirmed basically that anyone who disobeys authority or even questions authority is now considered mentally ill and can be thrown in a prison-like mental institution under tax payers dollars.
As would people of much lesser character.
One only needs to recall Hillary's very recent paragraph-length-without-breath screech concerning a patriots right to criticize the government.
Are we gunna get us a Krazy Check ?...;0)
Good point!
ugh
bump
So some nutcase is going to tell ME that I’m a nutcase and throw me in a nuthouse? Nuts to them.
Too mentally ill to own a firearm, right? Would that be what they are getting at?
later reading
You’re right, Lucy - the Gulag Archipelago is a solid comparison...
You are pretty close to nailing it. I have yet to PERSONALLY meet a psychologist or psychiatrist who doesn’t have more mental problems than the average person and they DO project their own crap onto others routinely.
Hahahahaha! Sure, who's left out there to pay for the tax payers' padded rooms? Someone didn't think this through.
Adding to ‘Weird News’ near the top later today.
Thank you for the ping.
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