The U.S. Department of Justice reported June 30 that several hundred defendants were charged with health care fraud of more than $14 billion, but the more important news may be that federal agencies are standing up a data sharing system that will make this kind of enforcement more effective.

U.S. Medicare coverage of telehealth and telemedicine sometimes seems to lag inappropriately, but fears of fraud were borne out in a conviction obtained recently by the Department of Justice.

The U.S. Department of Justice is reshuffling its enforcement focus for the coming three years per a May 12 memo attributed to Matthew Galeotti, director of the department’s criminal division. Galeotti said federal attorneys should avoid prosecutorial adventurism in an effort to strike what he described as “an appropriate balance” between enforcement and “unnecessary burdens on American enterprise.”

The U.S. Department of Justice arrested two men in connection with fraudulently billing the Medicare program for COVID-19 tests, some of which were billed for deceased beneficiaries. The case is notable for its use of foreign nationals recruited to set up non-existent labs to file the claims, seeming to signal a new front in efforts to corral Medicare fraud in the U.S.

Device makers may find it difficult to avoid running afoul of the Anti-Kickback Statute, but a recent case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit suggests that the statutory definition of a referral is not set in stone.

The U.S. Department of Justice may have dismantled its civil division, but that doesn’t mean companies in the life sciences can let their guard down.

The U.S. Department of Justice recently announced the formation of a task force that will advocate the roll-back of regulations that affect a wide swath of sectors of the American economy. Health care is one of the areas of interest for the task force, which will examine state as well as federal regulations.

False Claims Act litigation in the U.S. spiked significantly according to a new report by Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, at least in terms of the number of cases brought to the courts.

The fact that both the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice have oversight of mergers and acquisitions is something of a regulatory oddity. But David Balto, an attorney specializing on antitrust matters, told BioWorld that this may change in 2025 thanks to support for such a move from both Congress and the White House.