Editor:
In my opinion, Curt Schroder’s recent op-ed (Daily Times, March 21) misrepresents the nature and benefits of the False Claims Act legislation currently going through the Pennsylvania legislative process as HB 1691.
It passed the House on a healthy bipartisan 136-67 vote and is currently in the Senate Health and Human Services Committee.
I am not a lawyer but I covered federal false claim cases for 28 years while working at Westlaw. This bill appears to be virtually identical to the federal version except that it permits individuals to file false claim suits against persons or companies that haveallegedly committed fraud against the state government.
Medicaid would be a prime target, but it can also involve different kinds of state contracts, for highway construction, facilities for state agencies, false billing for services and countless other things.
The suers are known as “qui tam” plaintiffs: “qui tam” is the first part of a Latin phrase meaning they are filing suit “on behalf of themselves and the king.”
Often qui tam plaintiffs have themselves been part of the conspiracy to defraud the government that they are disclosing or they have been unwittingly coerced into participating, so they have firsthand evidence or knowledge of the conspiracy that no outsider could have.
The way it works at the federal level, and the bill indicates it will work the same way on the state level, is this: A person with firsthand evidence of a fraud against the government files a...
Editor: In my opinion, Curt Schroder’s recent op-ed (Daily Times, March 21) misrepresents the nature and benefits of the False Claims Act legislation currently going through the Pennsylvania legis...