By Sophie Borland Scottish patients can collect free prescriptions from today – leaving England as the only country in the UK still charging for them. English patients will be charged £7.40 for every item prescribed by a doctor – an increase of 20p – but Scotland today joins Wales and Northern Ireland in abolishing the charges. The move means that English patients are effectively subsiding free drugs for those living elsewhere in the UK. Read more…

In early 2010, Medicare paid $135,000 to a discount pharmacy in Hialeah, Fla. for drug prescriptions written by four doctors. There were only a few problems. First, two of the doctors were dead. A third doctor was alive, living in Portland, Ore., but he never wrote the prescriptions. The fourth doctor was a few months into a three-year prison sentence, according to federal court records, for conspiracy to commit Medicare fraud. In October, Renier Vicente Rodriguez Fleitas, 60, owner of Pirifer Phamacy and Discount and a former lieutenant colonel in the Cuban military, pleaded guilty to conspiring...

Five months to 2 1/2-year prison sentences were handed to eight nurses who worked for healthcare agencies accused of stealing millions from Medicare. Eight Miami-Dade nurses who worked for two local home healthcare agencies accused of fleecing millions from Medicare were sentenced Friday to prison terms ranging from five months to 2 ½ years. Physician Jorge Dieppa, charged with defrauding Medicare by writing more than 300 prescriptions for patients who received unnecessary diabetic services billed by the agencies, faces trial at the end of February. ABC Home Health and Florida Home Health Care...

Newly trained female doctors in the United States make nearly $17,000 less than their male counterparts, even though women increasingly are choosing careers in higher-paying medical specialties, U.S. researchers said on Thursday. They said there has been a widening gender gap in starting salaries for female doctors, rising from a difference of $3,600 in 1999 to $16,819 in 2008. “It is not surprising to say that women physicians make less than male physicians because women traditionally choose lower-paying jobs in primary care fields or they choose to work fewer hours,” Anthony Lo Sasso...

By Bill Mears, CNN Supreme Court Producer Another federal judge has upheld the legality of the sweeping health care reform requirement that most Americans purchase health insurance by 2014. Wednesday’s decision from Virginia adds to the legal muddle over the constitutionality of the landmark legislation championed by President Barack Obama and the Democratic Congress. In a 54-page decision, Judge Norman Moon dismissed a pending lawsuit and ruled that government authority to oversee “individuals’ decisions about how and when to pay for health care are activities that in the aggregate...

As small towns suffer from a continuing flight from rural toward-more urban living, some economic development groups and governments in these troubled areas have chosen to stay and fight. The Homestead Act of 1862 is no longer in effect, but free land is still available out there in the great wide open (often literally in the great wide open). In fact, the town of Beatrice, Nebraska has even enacted a Homestead Act of 2010. As with the homesteaders of the 1800s, the new pioneers must not be the faint of heart—they can’t be the type to shy away from the trials of building a home from the...

By: JO CIAVAGLIA One consumer group found more than one-third of state insurance bureaus reported “much higher” health insurance fraud last year. A person bearing a government ID badge appears at your door with a sales pitch that goes something like this: By law, all Americans are now required to obtain health insurance. You have 30 days to comply or face jail time. Sign here to buy your coverage. The claim sounds legitimate. Most people have heard something, somewhere, about the new federal health care law and how it requires that everyone carry health insurance. But those coverage...

The Food and Drug Administration’s additional approval of the wrinkle-smoothing injection Botox as a treatment for migraine headaches should prove to be a “watershed” moment for Allergan Inc.’s revenue and earnings growth, according to a William Blair & Co. analyst. Ben Andrew said in a Monday morning research note that the new use could be worth $1 billion to Allergan’s top line within five years. “Based on our field work, we believe the market has not fully incorporated Allergan’s ability to drive revenue and earnings growth from this indication,”...

Medicare fraud operation, netting $163 million, was run by Armenian gangsters, federal prosecutors allege. A vast network of Armenian gangsters and their associates used phantom health care clinics and other means to try to cheat the government medical insurance program Medicare out of $163 million, the largest fraud by one criminal enterprise in the program’s history, U.S. authorities said Wednesday. Federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere charged 73 people. Most of the defendants were captured during raids Wednesday morning in New York City and Los Angeles, but there also were arrests...

By Luke Salkeld and Hannah Roberts A cash-strapped NHS hospital paid £2,557 a day for an interim boss, it emerged yesterday. For working just 97 days during his ten-month stint in charge, Derek Smith earned a staggering £248,041. The 61-year-old also claimed just under £20,000 in expenses to cover travel, food and subsistence during that time, in which he worked an average of three or four days a week. His daily rate is significantly more than a nurse would expect to earn in an entire month. Dorset County Hospital, which is £5.1million in the red, also hired three other interim directors to...