"The founder and CEO of a hospice services company instructed nurses to administer fatal overdoses to patients who had ‘been on the hospice service for too long,’ the FBI alleges.
As the FBI tells it, Brad Harris became a one-man private death panel as the owner and CEO of a Texas hospice.
“You need to make this patient go bye-bye,” Harris texted one his nurses at Novus Health Care Services, as recounted in an FBI search warrant affidavit.
The Feb. 5 affidavit, first reported by NBC 5 in Dallas, further alleges that 34-year-old Harris said of another patient, “If this f**k would just die.”On at least four occasions, the affidavit says, Harris instructed nurses to administer overdoses to patients who had “been on the hospice service for too long.”
In one instance, Harris allegedly texted a nurse to dispatch a lingerer “by increasing the patient’s medication dosage to approximately four times the maximum allowed.”
The motive for the big hurry, the affidavit says, was money.
Hospice care is no longer the province of nuns and other noble religious volunteers.
It is now a multibillion-dollar industry where companies compete for patients who translate into taxpayer bucks.
To control the greed and the accompanying costs, the federal government imposes an annual “aggregate” cap for hospice care of $27,820.75 per Medicaid/Medicare patient..."
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