Sense and Sentencing; A Comparative Look at Work Comp Fraudsters Michael Drobot and Ron Calderon.
By Jorge Alexandria - February 26, 2014
You don’t usually hear about workers’ compensation and spinal fusion surgery as being related to death. But it happens and it happens a lot. In a study titled “Mortality After Lumbar Fusion Surgery”, Dr. Sham Maghout Juratli of Wayne State University School of Medicine found that out of 2,378 workers' compensation patients who underwent spinal fusion surgery, 103 died. That is a high number of deaths.
Now consider the case of Michael D. Drobot, 69, the former owner of the tiny orthopedic Pacific Hospital of Long Beach, California, who drew the attention of the FBI for his unusual 16-year heavy roster of workers’ compensation spinal surgeries. He admitted to authorities that he would pay kickbacks of $15,000 per lumbar fusion surgery and $10,000 per cervical fusion surgery to referring physicians just for the privilege of billing the insurance companies the full price in what turned out to be a $500 million scheme to defraud workers' compensation insurance providers. I suspect some of those surgeries were not medically necessary. I further suspect that out of those unnecessary surgeries, some patients died. It’s a numbers game. Of those that lived and were left worse for the effort- and without any chance of meaningful recovery- a medical malpractice suit cannot be brought against the fraud conspirators due the strict restrictions of the statute of limitations.
Yet, Michael Drobot is not being charged with murder, attempted murder, or manslaughter and instead has accepted responsibility, in a plea bargain, for defrauding insurance companies and is expected to receive 16 years in prison when he is sentenced on March 31, 2014 in Santa Ana, California.
Now compare this with California State Senator Ron Calderon who was ensnared in the Drobot probe and whose help Drobot sought in keeping a "spinal pass-through law" on the books. Senator Calderon is accused of accepting tens of thousands of dollars in bribes and using the powers of his elected office to enrich himself. He could face nearly 400 years in prison.
Sure, I get it, public corruption is a betrayal of the public trust that threatens the integrity of our democratic institutions; but 400 years in prison is a severe punishment. 400 years! Keep in mind that Calderon’s only crime was self- enrichment; he did not kill anyone.
Why such a disparity in sentencing? The sentence sought for Calderon appears to be far more severe than Mr. Drobot when Drobot’s crimes went on for 16 years, were far greater in severity, resulted in higher loss of dollars, and in all probability included the demise of patients.
The stark and sobering reality is that the criminal justice system is plagued with conscious and unconscious bias. Could it be that the sensationalism and the high profile office of Senator Calderon played a part, so much so that that the Attorney General’s office wants to exploit it so it can be deemed worthy of the fraud commission’s funding?
Now some may dismiss me as a quack but something is amiss here, and I’ve reached this conclusion reluctantly: that the punishment for either man does not fit the crime. Michael Drobot’s proposed sentence is too lenient while that being pursued for Senator Calderon is excessive.
And what about the doctors who received the kickbacks from Michael Drobot? When will they face prosecution?
Jorge Alexandría is a U.S. Army veteran who received his B.A. in Political Science from Cal State Los Angeles, and graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a Master’s Degree in Public Administration.
He holds both a California Workers Compensation Claims Professional (WCCP) designation and the State of California’s Self-Insured Administrator’s License. He has more than 20 years of experience in claims handling, supervision, and risk management.
He currently practices federal workers’ compensation of maritime interest.
He can be reached at Riskletter@mail.com. The views and knowledge expressed in this article are Jorge Alexandría’s alone.
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