It’s estimated we spend up to a trillion dollars annually on unnecessary medical treatments in the US, and it landed one surgeon in prison, his work described by prosecutors as plain butchery.
Noel Dorsey tells Action News she was betrayed by the same doctor she trusted with her health. Today she and her attorney filing a 25 million dollar lawsuit alleging that back in February of 2012 she was severely mistreated by two staff physicians at the Surgical Institute of Michigan in Westland.
I feel like I’m not even a mom anymore. I’m not working anymore.
Attorney Albert J. Dib tells us Dorsey had bogus back surgery done by Dr. Aria Sabit and co-surgeon Dr. Jiab Hasan Suleiman. Further allegations are that Blue Cross Blue Shield was billed for surgery that was never done. Two dozen lawsuits were filed against Dr. Sabit, and 14 patients who are permanently maimed spoke out at his sentencing. Court documents show he persuaded patients to have spinal fusion surgery but sometimes never installed the hardware or performed the fusion. Authorities also claimed he stole 11 million dollars from insurance companies and received nearly $440,000 in illegal kickbacks from Apex, a medical device company. Dr. Sabit was recently sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Upsetting story, this is a sad story. We’re joined now by board-certified spine surgeon Dr. Hooman Melamed. How often is this happening, and what can people do?
Well, first of all, the good news is that the, it’s not as much as people think. I think there’s still a lot of good ethical doctors out there
I agree.
who do what is the right thing.
And in this case, they didn’t get the operation that they said that they were going to get.
That’s exactly right.
You can get into medicine for all the right reasons, but greed is a very powerful thing. I can’t tell you how often I have conversations about good care versus making money, because there’s a lot of money to be had. And this is a jumping off point where I wanted to talk about how did we get to a point where it’s driven by the almighty dollar instead of what’s in the best interest of the patient.
We have a health care crisis in this country, folks. I’m gonna tell you right now, your hospitals, a lot of them are for-profit. They don’t worry about you and your health care outcome. They worry about how much money they’re gonna make off of you as a patient. And then I’m telling the truth
