Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says she was wrong to urge the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to pay for high-priced and unnecessary drug screening tests from a company being investigated for defrauding Florida Medicaid of millions.
Bondi told The Palm Beach Post in an email Friday that she never should have issued a 2014 letter to CMS supporting the tests performed by Millennium Laboratories. Bondi explained in her email that she believed the letter, drafted by her staff, only supported the general concept of drug testing, not a company that was under federal investigation.
Florida's Agency for Healthcare Administration, which oversees Medicaid, wrote both Millennium and Bondi's office in 2012, stating that company was probably running a kickback scheme.
Millennium agreed to pay $256 million in October to resolve federal kickback and civil fraud charges.
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