{"id":26510,"date":"2011-09-14T09:45:01","date_gmt":"2011-09-14T13:45:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=26510"},"modified":"2011-09-14T09:45:01","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T13:45:01","slug":"vietnam-vet-sometimes-the-good-guy-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26510","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam Vet: Sometimes the good guy wins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foxnews.com\/us\/2011\/09\/14\/wheelchair-bound-vietnam-vet-uncovers-multimillion-dollar-medical-aid-fraud\/?test=latestnews\">Fox News<\/a>, a good story about a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who is enjoying a bit of a windfall after investigating how his benefits maxed out; <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Richard West, 63, of Tuckerton, [New Jersey] first found his Medicaid benefits were wrongly maxed out in 2004 during a visit to the dentist and spent the past seven years investigating the scam, the New York Post reported.<\/p>\n<p>Following the dentist visit, West returned home and examined his own records, when he found Maxim Healthcare &#8212; the agency that provides his health aides &#8212; had billed the government for care he never got, including visits from nurses he never met.<\/p>\n<p>After spending months trying to get government officials to investigate the scam, he hired a lawyer and filed a federal lawsuit. His efforts resulted in the largest financial settlement in home healthcare fraud history.<\/p>\n<p>West said, &#8220;From my wheelchair, on a ventilator and oxygen, I have spent the last seven years in this fight. Sometimes, the good guy wins.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The more I uncovered, the more pissed off I got that someone was making money on my disability. It&#8217;s people like me that will keep these big companies honest,&#8221; he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>West is currently enjoying his $15 million whistleblower reward.  That&#8217;s what a real whistleblower does. Thanks to Fritz for the link. Welcome home, Richard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Fox News, a good story about a wheelchair-bound Vietnam veteran who is enjoying a bit &hellip; <a title=\"Vietnam Vet: Sometimes the good guy wins\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=26510\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Vietnam Vet: Sometimes the good guy wins<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[118],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-veterans-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26510\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}