Whistleblowerlawyerblog Author Testifies In Support of Georgia Department of Community Health’s “State False Medicaid Claims Act”
This morning, a new state False Claims Act cleared a hurdle as it was approved by a Georgia legislative subcommittee.
Georgia’s new “State False Medicaid Claims Act,” which has qui tam whistleblower provisions similar to the federal False Claims Act, received unanimous support among members of the subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee chaired by Rep. Edward Lindsey of Atlanta.
Testifying in support of the new False Medicaid Claims Act were Inspector General Doug Colburn of the Georgia Department of Community Health, and Mary Beth Westmoreland of the Georgia Attorney General’s Office.
Also testifying in support of the law was Michael A. Sullivan of Finch McCranie, LLP (one of the authors of this whistleblowerlawyerblog). Sullivan was asked to address how the federal False Claims Act has worked in practice since he began working with the statute in the late 1980s, and how the states have seized the opportunity to create their own whistleblower laws, similar to the False Claims Act. He discussed the great successes of the federal statute as the government’s “primary weapon” for combatting fraud. Sullivan also provided the legislators a version of his article explaining how the False Claims Act works, which also appears on this whistleblower lawer blog.
Georgia, like the many other states now considering a False Claims Act, stands to increase its share of Medicaid fraud recoveries substantially if it enacts a bill that passes muster with the Office of Inspector General of HHS.
We were very pleased to be a part of the process of assisting legislators in protecting taxpayer funds. We will be there as the new whistleblower law progresses through the legislative process.