Dr. Gregory Gerber, MD, 55, is a physical medicine & rehabilitation specialist in Sandusky, OH with over 30 years of experience in the medical field. After a 3 year wait for the government to construct a crime, he was indicted April 16 with 51 counts of distribution of controlled substances and two counts of health care fraud.
History of the Case: Gregory Gerber, MD vs. US Government.
In August 2018, federal agents raided Dr. Gregory Gerber’s office, one of the few pharmacies still filling his prescriptions, his home and a storage unit. They confiscated documents and materials. Was there a warrant with just cause for them to have the authority to do that? Probably not.
Point #1: We need to take away actual immunity from these government agents that break the law to construct an illegal case against US citizens.
Justin Herdman, the U.S. Attorney for Northern Ohio, accused Gerber of prescribing opioids without accepted medical reasons and accepting payments from pharmaceutical companies.
Point #2: According to the Controlled Substance Act (CSA), only the doctor can determine what is legitimate medical practice.
Point #3: Being paid for speaking for a pharmaceutical company is not illegal. It’s accepted business.
In 2018, Herdman secured a temporary restraining order in Toledo’s U.S. District Court to prevent Gerber from prescribing controlled substances. This was a landmark move by the government.
Assistant U.S. attorneys Gene Crawford and Chelsea Rice told Dr. Gerber’s attorneys they intended to prosecute him for the same conduct alleged in the civil case. They offered him a plea agreement to avoid prosecution that was “take it or leave it.” He left it.
Investigation of Gregory Gerber, MD
The investigation was conducted by the FBI, DEA and the Ohio Board of Pharmacy. At one point, an undercover agent posed as a patient and allegedly received opioids when she “wasn’t in pain”. But while in the exam room, she probably stated she had pain.
Point #4: Government agents getting opioids fraudulently by claiming they have pain when they don’t are the ones breaking the law. They should be charged with fraud.
Creating Crime Where There Is None
Finally, the Feds have created a crime. After the standard 3 years of combing the records in order to create a crime, acting U.S. Attorney Bridget M. Brennan announced the indictment.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost says “More Ohioans are dying from opioid overdoses than at any point in this devastating epidemic.”
Point #5: The cause of this is these outrageous attacks on doctors, forcing legitimate pain patients to the streets for self-treatment.
The indictment uses the standard government cookie cutter misuse of the Controlled Substance Act, stating that Dr. Gerber prescribed controlled substances “outside the usual course of professional practice and not for a legitimate medical purpose”.
Then, in order to confiscate more money from him than the government paid ( like 3x more than he was paid), they go for Medicare fraud for “medically unnecessary prescriptions”. They do this, because they get back what the doctor charged, not what the doctor was paid. And in the case of prescriptions, the doctor wasn’t paid anything, so all the money they confiscate back from him is bonus money.
Point #6: If there are actual laws in this country allowing this to happen, they need to be changed and the legislators need to be held accountable.
The press release on the indictment states:
- Defendant improperly performed patient physical and historical examinations, failed to establish evidence-based, objective diagnoses, and used these diagnoses to prescribe excessive doses of controlled substances for long periods of time without evidence of efficacy and while ignoring signs of addiction and drug abuse among his patients.
- Defendant wrote over approximately 835 prescriptions for Subsys that were medically unnecessary and for patients who did not have cancer pain.
- Defendant received compensation from Insys by participating in the company’s speakers bureau, a program that paid representatives to engage with other medical professionals and promote the Subsys medication.
- A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government’s burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
The False Claims Act (FCA)
Dr. Gerber can be remembered for being the first-ever civil injunction filed by the Justice Department as a new avenue to use the laws inappropriately to attack doctors for money. In August 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice announced allegations against him for violating the False Claims Act (FCA).
Dr. Gerber is indicted for 173 prescriptions for Subsys for patients with no cancer diagnosis. So these prescriptions are labeled “unnecessary” and should not have been covered under Medicare Part D.
Now, any time a doctor prescribes opioids to a government-insured patient, it could give rise to FCA claims, since the government would claim these drugs are “unnecessary”
Speaking for Drug Companies
The government is also using another front to attack doctors—the speakers for drug companies teaching other doctors about their products. This is a tried and true method to get new information out to the working physician—dinner and a presentation. Naturally, the speaker must have his expenses paid, and be paid for his time. The government is now calling that a “kickback”. NOT!!!
Doctors don’t have time to listen to drug reps in the office. These speaking dinners are an efficient and good way to get the word to the doctor. And if you think a free meal is going to buy a doctor’s decision-making, you are crazy. Doctors do what is best for their patient (If they are independent. Sorry, but hospital-owned doctors do what is best for their employer—the hospital. This is why most doctors being attacked are independent and minority).
So now, any doctor who serves as a speaker for a drug company and prescribes that drug, will be charged with the FCA. And since you don’t get the invite to speak without prescribing the drug, that ends the #1 method for doctors to learn about drugs. That’s great. Thanks a lot, government.
Another problem with this is that doctors are being charged for doing this in the past, before this became an option for the government to charge them with a crime. We are supposed to have a law in America called ex post facto. Meaning that you have to know about a law to be charged with it. They can’t come back at you in later years and charge you with a crime for something you did when that action was legal.
Need Your Help
We have to stop these illegal attacks on doctors and the creation of laws for the simple means of government confiscation of doctor’s assets. Most of the doctors being attacked are independent, minority physicians.
We need a bill for Congress to amend these laws being used against legitimate physicians. Discrimination here is rampant. So we are creating a survey. We will need this survey to go out to every medical doctor available. Please send us email addresses for organizations and individual physicians to get this survey out to as many people as possible. Use the Contact Us button below. Thanks.
