SOCIAL SECURITY FRAUD : WHO’S STEALING OUR HEALTH CARE MONEY | M6 | Zone Interdite

Faced with the scale of cheating, even the State admits that it is no longer able to calculate the total of Social Security fraud. New low-cost centres are springing up all over France. These are private health clinics, feeding off the shortage of doctors. At their head, a businessman for whom care is a business like any other.

It’s a development that goes along with serious misdemeanours: billing for treatment never given, over-charging, or multiple consultations serving no purpose. Even more concerning: patients in some centres never even see a real doctor. Prescriptions are written remotely by foreign practioners or, even worse, simple employees passing themselves off as specialists.

The fraud is not limited to low-cost. In Marseilles, the trial of the “butcher-dentists” sends shivers down your spine. Their business model was to pull healthy teeth in order to bill the Social Security for the service and the costs are believed to total some 1.6 million euros and, more importantly, 350 victims of serious mutilation.

But it’s not just the professionals who cheat Health Insurance. Half of frauds are committed by the insured. With the assistance of not-too-scrupulous doctors, many employees stack up unjustified sick notes, sometimes just so they can take a vacation. Checks are rare and often ineffective, so employers are now turning to private detectives.