Profiles in Medical Ethics

Life was good for Michael D. Drobot when he owned Pacific Hospital in Long Beach, CA, — and he wasn’t averse to sharing the wealth. His good friend, California State Senator Ronald Calderon, for example, was the recipient of Drobot’s “extraordinary largesse… In addition to money, there were jobs given to Calderon’s children, expensive dinners, trips to golf resorts and free flights on a private plane, the indictment said.”

The indictment, according to the FBI, led to a plea agreement from Dobrot which reveled that “All of these financial benefits were intended to ensure that Senator Calderon would take legislative positions favorable to defendant and Pacific Hospital, which would allow defendant to continue to commit and expand his health care fraud scheme.”

The AP’s Linda Duetsch reports that “Drobot has agreed to testify about his links to Calderon which began when he sought help in keeping a “spinal pass-through law” on the books. The now-repealed law permitted hospitals to pass on spinal medical device costs, plus up to an additional $250, to workers’ comp insurers… In his disclosures to the government, Drobot said he set up shell companies to sell surgeons hardware used in the surgeries at highly inflated prices. If the surgeon did not use the devices specified by Drobot, the kickbacks were smaller, the documents said.”

The FBI investigation was code named “Operation Spinal Cap”