In this article we examine psychiatric fraud as it relates to the drugging of children. Why is more money spent on the psychiatric drugging of children than any other health issue?
by Kieron McFadden
In part one of this series we looked briefly at how psychiatrists have defrauded the tax payer though false prescriptions and false bills. The amount of money involved looks to be astoundingly large if the cases unearthed to date, thanks to the sterling efforts of the FBI and other agencies, is anything to go by.
However, the extent of the fraud is much broader and more far-reaching than that. And it is far more destructive of the nation’s citizens than the damage it does to their wallets.
On May 5, 2009, for instance, one psychiatric watchdog group, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, exposed a massive Medicaid Fraud involving the prescribing of psychiatric drugs to children in the US.
While preparing a lawsuit entitled, "Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v State of Alaska et al," seeking to prohibit the State of Alaska from paying for psychiatric drugs prescribed off-label to children and youth in Alaska, PsychRights carried out an investigation and determined that the vast majority of psychiatric drugs were prescribed for uses not approved by the FDA, and paid for by Medicaid, and this constituted Medicaid fraud.
A tremendous percentage of psychotropic medications prescribed for and administered to children and youth do not qualify for reimbursement, the group’s leading attorney, Jim Gottstein pointed out in letters to Senators Charles Grassley and Herb Kohl, and Representatives Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, John Dingell and Barney Frank.
He wrote, "For example, no anti-convulsants masquerading as "mood stabilizers," such as Depakote or Tegretol, have been approved for pediatric psychiatric use or supported by any of the compendia. However, these drugs, especially Depakote, are routinely paid for by Medicaid without any apparent consideration that the practice has been prohibited by Congress."
He further pointed out that many other drugs that are being prescribed for children, such as Seroquel, Zyprexa or Geodon are not approved by the FDA for pediatric use or supported by any of the drug compendia.
In 2000, for example PsychRights found that Medicaid was paying approximately $123,000 per month just for anticonvulsants prescribed to kids and $288,000 per month on what are known as second generation neuroleptics. On these drugs alone the Alaskan taxpayers are forking out approximately $411,000 PER MONTH in improper Medicaid payments.
That is roughly $5 million a year that the Alaskan taxpayer could have been spending on non-drug treatments of the true causes of problems of mood or behavior some children may be experiencing.
For example, there is the improvement of diet so as to eradicate allergies and poor nutrition.
By way of another example, modern discoveries in education have shown that merely clearing up and getting defined the misunderstood words a child – or indeed an adult – has accumulated throughout his education can produce a marked uplift in mood, conduct and morale, a drop in delinquency and often a rise in IQ. This is very easy for anyone to verify and if you want to know how, you can email the author of this article for more information.
PsychRights summed it up aptly, "Also, because most current child psychiatrists no longer know how to help children and youth without resort to the drugs, we are suggesting that the savings be used to fund approaches that have been proven to be safe and effective,"
This wholesale drugging of children is not merely confined to Alaska but is a nationwide problem, as highlighted recently by the child suicides in Florida at the opposite end of the Union. As PsychRights pointed out in its aforementioned letters, ""Extrapolating this to the entire country.........there is over $2 Billion in Medicaid payments for psychiatric drugs to children and youth that Congress has explicitly prohibited."
Lest my American readers be given the false impression that their fellow men in other nations are any less ineptly governed, it is not just an American phenomenon but a global one. Governments across the planet demonstrate an extraordinary degree of negligence in allowing for-profit vested interest groups such as psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical giants to drug children pretty much as they see fit and without any apparent concern about the long-term physical and mental consequences for the child.
The harm done is not merely financial. Indeed, the financial harm is the least of our worries: whether FDA approved or not, the drugs being prescribed with such abandon and so profitably by psychiatrists and often, sadly, by medical doctors, are devastatingly harmful physically and in terms of mental degeneration and drug dependency. The most famous of the psychiatric watchdogs, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and many other groups have amassed a mountain of evidence as to the dangers of such drugs to adults let alone the vulnerable young.
In the early 1990’s, the drug companies, aided and abetted as ever by their "pushers," the psychiatrists, began targeting children and youth for psychiatric drugs, extending their profit net way beyond the extant use of Ritalin and other stimulants on children "diagnosed" with the now discredited bogus Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Suddenly children were being diagnosed with all manner of disorders requiring drugs (what else?) to "treat" them (assuming turning a child into a drug addicted zombie classifies as treatment) and claims to Medicaid for psychiatric drugs prescribed to children and youth skyrocketed as the psychiatric milking of the system gathered pace. As usual, the government failed to notice that anything was amiss or, if it noticed, was unable to rouse itself to the defence of the nation’s children.
In 2006, the care and treatment for children diagnosed with mental disorders had soared to approximately $9 billion. In fact, a new government study has revealed that more money was spent on treating mental disorders in kids in the US in 2006 than for ANY OTHER MEDICAL CONDITION!!
While the rest of us have to work for a living and produce something of value to our fellows, the psycho-pharmacy has been able to amass billions relatively easily by the systematic drugging of the population and the destruction of large numbers of our young, an operation that has been greatly helped by the inaction of governments and indeed would not have been possible faced with a government willing and able to discharge its duties. While we have every right to expect our government to act in the best interests of the citizenry as a whole, not merely the psycho-pharmacy, it has in fact stood by and done nothing.
However, as the unchecked viruses of drug addiction, crime, violence, degeneration and deteriorating health and morale sweep unchecked through our societies, the evidence is clear that we are being defrauded not just of wealth but of health and the pursuit of happiness too.
It is difficult for most of us to confront the kind of thinking that seeks to drug kids needlessly, while convincing the public of the lie that "no other solution" exists and all so as to make a buck. It is difficult for us too to comprehend the thinking of governments and politicians who think it is perfectly all right for this to happen.
Mr Gottstein expressed it thus: "...children’s and youth’s future, health, and even lives, have been sacrificed and continue to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits."
That few of us can imagine abuse of such extent and cold calculation and the complicity of our own governments in it, is probably what has protected this fraud thus far.
But, thankfully, that protection is now wearing thin and a reckoning is coming.
On that, I’ll give the final word to PsychRights, "It is hard to come up with an adjective that adequately conveys the horror this is inflicting on America’s children and youth. Suffice it to say that when the country wakes up to the carnage this has caused, it will be recognized as the largest iatrogenic (doctor caused) public health disaster in history."
However, the extent of the fraud is much broader and more far-reaching than that. And it is far more destructive of the nation’s citizens than the damage it does to their wallets.
On May 5, 2009, for instance, one psychiatric watchdog group, the Law Project for Psychiatric Rights, exposed a massive Medicaid Fraud involving the prescribing of psychiatric drugs to children in the US.
While preparing a lawsuit entitled, "Law Project for Psychiatric Rights v State of Alaska et al," seeking to prohibit the State of Alaska from paying for psychiatric drugs prescribed off-label to children and youth in Alaska, PsychRights carried out an investigation and determined that the vast majority of psychiatric drugs were prescribed for uses not approved by the FDA, and paid for by Medicaid, and this constituted Medicaid fraud.
A tremendous percentage of psychotropic medications prescribed for and administered to children and youth do not qualify for reimbursement, the group’s leading attorney, Jim Gottstein pointed out in letters to Senators Charles Grassley and Herb Kohl, and Representatives Henry Waxman, Bart Stupak, John Dingell and Barney Frank.
He wrote, "For example, no anti-convulsants masquerading as "mood stabilizers," such as Depakote or Tegretol, have been approved for pediatric psychiatric use or supported by any of the compendia. However, these drugs, especially Depakote, are routinely paid for by Medicaid without any apparent consideration that the practice has been prohibited by Congress."
He further pointed out that many other drugs that are being prescribed for children, such as Seroquel, Zyprexa or Geodon are not approved by the FDA for pediatric use or supported by any of the drug compendia.
In 2000, for example PsychRights found that Medicaid was paying approximately $123,000 per month just for anticonvulsants prescribed to kids and $288,000 per month on what are known as second generation neuroleptics. On these drugs alone the Alaskan taxpayers are forking out approximately $411,000 PER MONTH in improper Medicaid payments.
That is roughly $5 million a year that the Alaskan taxpayer could have been spending on non-drug treatments of the true causes of problems of mood or behavior some children may be experiencing.
For example, there is the improvement of diet so as to eradicate allergies and poor nutrition.
By way of another example, modern discoveries in education have shown that merely clearing up and getting defined the misunderstood words a child – or indeed an adult – has accumulated throughout his education can produce a marked uplift in mood, conduct and morale, a drop in delinquency and often a rise in IQ. This is very easy for anyone to verify and if you want to know how, you can email the author of this article for more information.
PsychRights summed it up aptly, "Also, because most current child psychiatrists no longer know how to help children and youth without resort to the drugs, we are suggesting that the savings be used to fund approaches that have been proven to be safe and effective,"
This wholesale drugging of children is not merely confined to Alaska but is a nationwide problem, as highlighted recently by the child suicides in Florida at the opposite end of the Union. As PsychRights pointed out in its aforementioned letters, ""Extrapolating this to the entire country.........there is over $2 Billion in Medicaid payments for psychiatric drugs to children and youth that Congress has explicitly prohibited."
Lest my American readers be given the false impression that their fellow men in other nations are any less ineptly governed, it is not just an American phenomenon but a global one. Governments across the planet demonstrate an extraordinary degree of negligence in allowing for-profit vested interest groups such as psychiatrists and the pharmaceutical giants to drug children pretty much as they see fit and without any apparent concern about the long-term physical and mental consequences for the child.
The harm done is not merely financial. Indeed, the financial harm is the least of our worries: whether FDA approved or not, the drugs being prescribed with such abandon and so profitably by psychiatrists and often, sadly, by medical doctors, are devastatingly harmful physically and in terms of mental degeneration and drug dependency. The most famous of the psychiatric watchdogs, the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) and many other groups have amassed a mountain of evidence as to the dangers of such drugs to adults let alone the vulnerable young.
In the early 1990’s, the drug companies, aided and abetted as ever by their "pushers," the psychiatrists, began targeting children and youth for psychiatric drugs, extending their profit net way beyond the extant use of Ritalin and other stimulants on children "diagnosed" with the now discredited bogus Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). Suddenly children were being diagnosed with all manner of disorders requiring drugs (what else?) to "treat" them (assuming turning a child into a drug addicted zombie classifies as treatment) and claims to Medicaid for psychiatric drugs prescribed to children and youth skyrocketed as the psychiatric milking of the system gathered pace. As usual, the government failed to notice that anything was amiss or, if it noticed, was unable to rouse itself to the defence of the nation’s children.
In 2006, the care and treatment for children diagnosed with mental disorders had soared to approximately $9 billion. In fact, a new government study has revealed that more money was spent on treating mental disorders in kids in the US in 2006 than for ANY OTHER MEDICAL CONDITION!!
While the rest of us have to work for a living and produce something of value to our fellows, the psycho-pharmacy has been able to amass billions relatively easily by the systematic drugging of the population and the destruction of large numbers of our young, an operation that has been greatly helped by the inaction of governments and indeed would not have been possible faced with a government willing and able to discharge its duties. While we have every right to expect our government to act in the best interests of the citizenry as a whole, not merely the psycho-pharmacy, it has in fact stood by and done nothing.
However, as the unchecked viruses of drug addiction, crime, violence, degeneration and deteriorating health and morale sweep unchecked through our societies, the evidence is clear that we are being defrauded not just of wealth but of health and the pursuit of happiness too.
It is difficult for most of us to confront the kind of thinking that seeks to drug kids needlessly, while convincing the public of the lie that "no other solution" exists and all so as to make a buck. It is difficult for us too to comprehend the thinking of governments and politicians who think it is perfectly all right for this to happen.
Mr Gottstein expressed it thus: "...children’s and youth’s future, health, and even lives, have been sacrificed and continue to be sacrificed on the altar of corporate profits."
That few of us can imagine abuse of such extent and cold calculation and the complicity of our own governments in it, is probably what has protected this fraud thus far.
But, thankfully, that protection is now wearing thin and a reckoning is coming.
On that, I’ll give the final word to PsychRights, "It is hard to come up with an adjective that adequately conveys the horror this is inflicting on America’s children and youth. Suffice it to say that when the country wakes up to the carnage this has caused, it will be recognized as the largest iatrogenic (doctor caused) public health disaster in history."
