August 18, 2009
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News: Chiropactor Credit Card Scam
A Minnesota chiropractor is being sued for allegedly falsifying his patients' income on CareCredit credit cards issued by G.E. Money Bank. According to a lawsuit filed jointly by Minnesota's Attorney General Lori Swanson and the Minnesota Board of Chiropractic Examiners, after Dr Cory Couillard falsified the credit card applications, he charged his patient's accounts with thousands of dollars in advance of providing any treatments. Dr. Couillard and his ExpressHealth P.A. clinic are named in the suit which states he enrolled over 150 patients in the CareCredit medical credit card. According to the suit, falsifying income as well as pre-billing are both violations of trade laws. The suit also states that Dr. Couillard set up solicitation for spinal scans, adjustments and other health information at a kiosk in a local mall.
The Attorney General stated that the suit against Dr. Couillard represents a small portion of a much larger problem of a growing credit card scam. In some cases, the healthcare provider asks the patient to sign up for the medical card to see if they are eligible and then bills the card for thousands of dollars. Patients are not given a full explanation on the terms and conditions of the CareCredit and typically expect to pay about $25 for each visit. Suddenly, they receive a bill for $2,000 to $5,000 for services they haven't yet received. In some cases, Dr. Couillard told patient's that if they didn't get properly aligned it would damage some of their organs. Dr. Couillard allegedly charged over $560,000 to fraudulently obtained CareCredit credit cards over the past two years. To date, Dr. Couillard has not had his licensed pulled, however, the Minnesota state Chiropractors' Board is investigating further.
Chiropractors are not the only individuals involved in this deceptive practice, specialists in the dental field and other healthcare providers have also begun deceiving patients and aggressively enrolling them into healthcare credit cards. Unsuspecting patients don't even realize they are paying interest on services they haven't yet received. Furthermore, if the patient is late on just one payment, the interest rate jumps up to nearly 30%. Swanson called the practice "the health care version of subprime predatory mortgage lending."