All Knucklehead Day Award Sixteen

Our sixteenth winner is Dr. Mohammed Y. Aiti. He gets the award for the following.

Dr. Mohammed Y. Aiti told healthy patients they had heart problems. Turns out he had a bad case of greed.

The cardiologist, who had an office in Dover, was in an Akron federal courtroom Wednesday and agreed to forfeit nearly $1.9 million and his medical license after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud.

Aiti, 53, of Jackson Township faces up to five years in prison and a maximum fine of $250,000. He was president of Premier Medical Group, a company he ran with his wife, Susan Aiti, that also had offices in Canton,

Massillon and the Cleveland area.

Starting in October 1998, the Aitis and Dr. Venkatesan Ravishankar, another Premier physician, started giving patients unnecessary heart-related tests that then were billed to Medicare, Medicaid and other insurance programs, according to the plea agreement.

Tests were scheduled as frequently as insurance providers would pay for them and claim forms often included false diagnoses.

Some of Premier’s doctors, including Ravishankar, relied on the company to sponsor visas allowing them to work in the United States. Mohammed Aiti used that leverage to pressure the doctors into ordering unnecessary tests, according to the plea agreement.

A whistle-blower’s civil lawsuit brought to light the allegations, which were investigated by the FBI and U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Aiti's wife and Ravishankar had their charges dismissed. Dr. Aiti is another fine example of the fraud today going on in the health care industry. Something I've written about regularly. It's done by both small-time doctors, and the biggest medical corporations in the country. I strongly believe much if not most of the fraud isn't even caught. Dr. Mohammed Y. Aiti was, and that's why he is our sixteenth Knucklehead winner of the Day.

Linked to- Big Dog, Right Wing Nation, Stop the ACLU, Third World County, Woman Honor Thyself, Rosemary,