LAWMAKERS WANT ACTION ON PAIN PILLS

TALLAHASSEE -- A Senate panel looking for ways to curb Medicaid fraud on
Wednesday called for a speedy crackdown on doctors who overprescribe
narcotics and other pills for the poor.

"These people aren't practicing medicine, they're practicing crime," said
Sen. Mike Fasano, R-New Port Richey, one of three lawmakers who sit on a
select subcommittee investigating prescription drug abuse in the state's
$12 billion Medicaid program. "I'm in the brokerage business, and when
someone breaks the law, they lose their license."

Panel members cited the case of Dr. Armando Angulo, who prescribed more
than $6.5 million worth of narcotics and other pills for Medicaid patients
during the past six years, including some who had died. Earlier this week,
state health officials ordered the former Hialeah general practitioner to
quit prescribing these drugs, but they allowed him to retain his license.
Angulo is thought to be out of the country.

"He can still treat patients, but he just can't prescribe pain medication.
It's just baffling to me," Fasano said.

Outrage over the handling of Angulo's case dominated the panel's final
public hearing, which also took testimony from state health and law
enforcement agencies calling for more manpower and money and stricter laws
to curb abuses in the health care program for low-income and disabled
Floridians.

The new fraud-fighting strategies are being formed in response to a South
Florida Sun-Sentinel series "Drugging the Poor" that found the state has
failed to curb the costly abuse of pain prescriptions and other narcotics
covered by Medicaid and an Orlando Sentinel investigation that looked at
Florida deaths related to oxycodone, a key ingredient in OxyContin.

"Everyone recognizes that this is not only costing the state millions of
dollars a year, but the lives of people are being destroyed. People are
suffering and we need to bring it to a head," said Senate Health Care
Chairman Burt Saunders, R-Naples, who appointed and chairs the three-member
Select Subcommittee on Medicaid Prescription Drug Over-Prescribing.

Among the reform proposals the panel heard:

Legislation supported by Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist to require
that any doctor who treats the poor be a certified Medicaid provider. The
proposal is intended to crack down on doctors such as Angulo, who was
kicked out of the Medicaid program in December 2000. Under a loophole in
the law his patients were able to continue billing Medicaid for prescriptions.

The Florida Department of Health wants new powers to investigate doctors
who engage in a "practice pattern which demonstrates a lack of reasonable
skill and safety to patients." Under current law, the state investigates
each complaint it receives against a doctor individually, a process that
often drags on for years and fails to uncover a pattern of substandard
medicine.

Linda Kleindienst and Fred Schulte are reporters for the South Florida
Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune Publishing Company.