The Maryland False Health Claims Act of 2010 is Amended and Sent to the House of Delegates
Today the Baltimore Business Journal carried an article on the amended Maryland False Health Claims Act of 2010.
While the amended bill will not pass muster under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 (and in the process earn Maryland an additional 10% on its Medicaid share) the bill is better than nothing.
A lot of good people worked very hard on getting a Maryland FCA passed this year, and ultimately the fact that DRA Compliance was compromised by amendments made to the bill in the House of Delegates is in no way the fault of Lt. Gov. Brown, or Secretary Colmers, or Inspector General Tom Russell.
There is no doubt that all of those folks, and their hard-working staffs, did everything that could be done.
Ultimately, the Maryland House of Delegates amended the bill such that they not only took it outside the realm of DRA compliance, but also created a new (and in my opinion, frivolous) set of defenses to a damage award in Maryland FCA cases. There are ten of these new "defenses" to a claim under the Maryland FCA, the court is required to consider them.
Apparently Maryland has now given up on DRA compliance and is instead going to settle for whatever they can get. The hope is that once the legislature sees that qui tam claims under the Maryland FCA do work, they will be willing to amend the law in later sessions.
Perhaps most troubling, however, is the provisions that provides as follows, and seems to require the Attorney General's office to notify the defendant of the claims while the case is under seal. This will, I dare say, cause other states a fair amount of heartburn.
Moreover, it will in all likelihood prevent qui tam lawyers from including a pendent state claim for Maryland when filing a nation-wide health care fraud case. The Maryland folks have said that this will only be used when patient safety is at issue in a case, but the language of the statute seems to be mandatory and causes me some concern.
I can't believe that any state legislature would take it upon themselves to reinvent the wheel. Its not as if a false claims statute is some brand new idea—they have 147 years of federal False Claims Act prosecutions to look at as a model. Moreover, they have the examples of states like Virginia, Texas, California, Florida, New York, and 21 other states to pass state false claims acts.
As I told the House of Delegates in my testimony, do they really think that states like Virginia and Texas would have false claims statutes if such legislation stirred up frivolous litigation, or if it were an economic burden on a state's economy?
At any rate, something is better than nothing, and my hat is off to Gov. O'Malley, Lt. Gov. Brown, Secretary Colmers, and Inspector General Tom Russell, as well as the hard-working staffs of each of those folks.
At least they all can rest comfortably in the knowledge that they will be proved right by the events to follow.
Posted by Zachary Kitts at 3/29/2010 12:17 PM 
Categories: legal blogs, State False Claims Act News, Litigation, Virginia Whistleblowers, False Claims Act, Qui Tam litigation
Tags: Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act Qui Tam Litigation in Virginia State false claims act news Federal False Claims Act Virginia Legal Blogs
Categories: legal blogs, State False Claims Act News, Litigation, Virginia Whistleblowers, False Claims Act, Qui Tam litigation
Tags: Virginia Fraud Against Taxpayers Act Qui Tam Litigation in Virginia State false claims act news Federal False Claims Act Virginia Legal Blogs
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