When lawyer and professor Elizabeth Chamblee Burch decided to start writing, she went and got a WHOLE DEGREE to do so.
Over the course of her study, she received a call from a whistleblower with a convoluted tale so crazy it had to be real. When she separately (and unrelatedly) heard from another lawyer about the same scam, Beth realized she had a book in her hands which she spent the next four years writing.
The Pain Brokers is the (unfortunately) true story of women caught in a mix of HIPAA violations (to say the least), scam callers, surgery mills, and unsavory legal practices which used their very real pain and injuries to inflate the value of medical mass torts. It is also the story of lawyers choosing to chase leads they didn’t have to chase, doctors raising red flags, and those same women forming their own ad hoc support grouop to bring these heinous practices to light. It reads like a Grisham, enrages you like investigative journalism, and teaches us all that raising your voice is the only way forward. As I’m always saying, nothing changes if nothing changes. Don’t sleep on The Pain Brokers!
P.S. Also, we just need universal healthcare already. May I suggest Medicare for All?
Links:
A write up on the Epic Systems lawsuit filed just this week that Beth and I mention in the interview.
