ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge on Friday sentenced former Georgia Insurance Commissioner John Oxendine to serve three-and-a-half years in prison after Oxendine pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud. U.S.
District Judge Steve Jones had one question for the 62-year-old Republican, who was elected four times to the office before mounting a failed run for governor: "Why?" As Jones noted at a hearing in Atlanta, Oxendine only personally gained $40,000 from the scheme, although Jones ordered him to pay a $25,000 fine and to share in $760,000 in restitution with Dr. Jeffrey Gallups, who pleaded guilty to health care fraud before he could even be indicted. Oxendine answered that he is “too much of a pleaser” and said he was trying to make his client Gallups happy.
That meant that Oxendine stood up before doctors who worked for Gallups at a September 2015 meeting at a Ritz-Carlton hotel in Atlanta and urged them to order unnecessary medical tests on patients and bill insurers, Oxendine said. It also meant Oxendine devised a plan to collect $260,000 in kickbacks from medical testing company Next Health through his consulting firm and funnel most of the money to Gallups, prosecutors said. Oxendine paid a $150,000 charitable contribution and $70,000 in attorney’s fees on Gallups′ behalf, prosecutors said.
Oxendine noted that his father, who was legally blind, served as a Gwinnett County judge. But Oxendine said he had betrayed his own duties as a lawyer. “I.