By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR
Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — It's getting personal now

In a shift still evolving, federal enforcers are targeting individual executives in health-care fraud cases that used to be aimed at impersonal corporations.

The new tactic is raising the anxiety level - and risks - for corporate honchos at drug companies, medical device manufacturers, nursing home chains and other major health-care enterprises that deal with Medicare and Medicaid.

Previously, if a company got caught, its lawyers in many cases would be able to negotiate a financial settlement. The company would write the government a check for a number followed by lots of zeroes and then promise not to break the rules again. The cost often would just get passed on to customers.

Now, on top of fines paid by a company, senior executives can face criminal charges even if they weren't involved in the scheme but could have stopped it had they known. Furthermore, they can be banned from doing business with government health programs - a career-ending consequence.

Many in industry see the more aggressive strategy as government overkill, meting out radical punishment to individuals whose guilt prosecutors would be hard-pressed to prove to a jury.

The feds say they got frustrated with repeat violations and decided to start using enforcement tools that were already on the books but had been allowed to languish. By some estimates, health-care fraud costs taxpayers $60 billion a year, galling when Medicare faces insolvency.

"When you look at the history of health-care enforcement, we've seen a number of Fortune 500 companies that have been caught not once, not twice, but sometimes three times violating the trust of the American people, submitting false claims, paying kickbacks to doctors, marketing drugs which have not been tested for safety and efficacy," said Lewis Morris, chief counsel for the inspector general of the Health and Human Services Department.

"To our way of thinking, the men and women in the corporate suite aren't getting it," Morris continued. "If writing a check for $200 million isn't enough to have a company change its ways, then maybe we have got to have the individuals who are responsible for this held accountable. The behavior of a company starts at the top."