Dentists who prey on children

I don't know about you, but just mentioning the word dentist makes my stomach churn. The sound of a dentist's drill sends shivers down my spine. One of the most frightening lines in the English language is: "You need a root canal."

As if we needed another reason to hate dentists, did you know that some dentists intentionally perform unnecessary dental work just to be able to bilk the government?

It gets worse. These same dentists have removed good teeth of poor children just to increase billings to Medicaid. I wish I could tell you this was the plot of a horror film, but this grotesque form of fraud is happening in real life.

The Department of Justice recently settled a case with a chain of dentists that were performing baby root canals on children who didn't need them, just so they could bill Medicaid for a more expensive procedure. (The technical name for this work is "pulpotomy." It's used when the infection from a cavity spreads into the pulp chamber around the tooth and requires removal of the pulp. Ouch!)

The original name of the dental chain was "Smile Starters." Pretty chilling when you realize that these dentists were scraping out the pulp of kids' gums for no real reason!

The dental chain overcharged Medicaid $5 million in two years. That is a lot of unnecessary root canals! And that's just for the procedures the government could prove were unnecessary! Think how many more there might have been!

These dentists took part in a lot of bad practices. They were accused of performing some of these procedures on children without first asking the parents for permission. And they also replaced teeth with stainless steel crowns for poor people who did not need crowns at all! Hardly a good way of starting a smile.

As punishment for committing fraud, the dentists were required to pay double the amount they overcharged to Medicaid fraud, or $10 million. They still face potential disciplinary action by the Board of Dentistry and possible lawsuits from the victims of these procedures.

Meanwhile, other dentists are committing more subtle forms of fraud. For instance, the same week this fraud case settled, Heartland Dental Care also paid the government $3 million because it had inflated its bills for Medicaid patients. Although the procedures performed by this group of dentists were medically necessary, Heartland "upcoded" the bills presented to Medicaid to claim more than it was entitled to receive.

If you know of dentist extracting money from Medicaid by performing unnecessary procedures or lying about the work that was performed, do what every American would beg you do to: report it!

It's hard enough going to the dentist without also having to worry that they are willing to lie to you about the work you need and use you to cheat the government.

Under the Department of Justice's Whistleblower Reward Program, you might get a large monetary reward (up to 25 percent of what the government collects). In the Smile Starter's case, your reward could have been $1.25 million. Isn't that a much less painful way to turn your frown into a smile?