Ticker: Father and son duo jailed in lottery scheme; Medicaid to audit excessive worth medication

A father and son from Watertown have every been despatched to jail for working an elaborate lottery fraud scheme designed to enhance themselves and help prize winners avoid paying taxes on their windfall, prosecutors talked about.

Ali Jaafar, 63, and Yousef Jaafar, 29, every of Watertown, cashed in 14,000 worthwhile lottery tickets over a roughly 10-year interval, laundered better than $20 million in proceeds, after which lied on their tax returns to cheat the IRS out of about $6 million, the U.S. authorized skilled’s office in Boston launched Monday.

The Jaafars purchased worthwhile lottery tickets at a discount from people who wished to avoid identification by the state lottery payment, which withholds taxes and wonderful child help funds from payouts.

Medicaid to audit extreme price medicine

The Facilities for Medicare and Medicaid Providers talked about Tuesday it’s planning to conduct a yearly audit to verify the prices drug makers value on a handful of the most expensive prescriptions lined by Medicaid.

Medicine that worth Medicaid in all probability essentially the most money — some as rather a lot as $2 million per remedy — will in all probability be chosen for the survey.

The proposal was prompted by rising drug prices and complaints from state leaders who say they’re having trouble negotiating these costs with producers, talked about Dan Tsai, director of Middle for Medicaid and Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program Providers.

“We’ve obtained very excessive value medication, who haven’t any competitors,” Tsai talked about Tuesday.

CMS doesn’t have the power to energy drug companies to range how rather a lot they value. However the administration hopes making additional particulars about how drug companies arrive at their pricing publicly on the market will put political pressure on the drug companies.