file photo Boyd Loving
Menendez campaign donor and Fla. eye doctor is nation’s highest paid Medicare physician
TRENTON — A West Palm Beach ophthalmologist and U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez’s close friend and major benefactor is Medicare’s $21 million man.
That’s how much Salomon Melgen, a retinal specialist, earned from treating elderly and disabled patients in 2012. He is Medicare’s highest reimbursed physician in the nation, according to never-before disclosed billing information released today by the Obama administration.
Ophthalmologists like Melgen were among the most highly compensated on the list of 770,000 physicians and health care organizations in the database. But Melgen earned more than 60 times than his average peer, taking in $20.8 million to treat 894 patients who underwent 94,000 procedures, according to the federal database.
Melgen’s relationship with Menendez came under scrutiny last year when New Jersey’s senior senator acknowledged he had accepted trips to the Dominican Republic in the doctor’s personal jet without reporting them on his campaign spending reports. Menendez went to bat for Melgen when Medicare audited the doctor and questioned $8.9 million in services billed from practice, according to a report in The Washington Post. Quoting Menendez aides, the Post said Menendez initially contacted federal officials in 2009 about the government’s audit of Melgen, complaining to the director overseeing Medicare payments that it was unfair to penalize the doctor because the billing rules were ambiguous, the aides said.
FBI agents raided Melgen’s office, Vitreo-Retinal Consultants Eye Center, last year. (Livio/Star-Ledger)
For those keeping track, that’s 105 procedures per patient or one every three days for the whole year. Makes as much sense as our friend with the 12 tons of quarters
That’s how you get enough money to fly your friend BOB MENEDEZ to Dominican Republic a couple of times on your private plane, and the why BOB forgets to pay.
Bob descends from a long line of New Jersey politicians including several of our former governors. He has a tradition to uphold. Even folks from Rhode Island have to give it up to us.