From Reason:
Last month a federal judge sentenced Rosa Martinez, a physician in Yakima, Washington, to a year’s probation and a $1,000 fine for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. The fraud occurred when a physician’s assistant in Martinez’s practice mistakenly charged the government for her services at the physician’s rate, which is allowed only when the supervising physician is present, which Martinez wasn’t. She said she was unaware of the rule but accepted responsibility for the errors because they occurred on her watch. The overcharges totaled $22.
This isn’t just a nationalized medicine case, although it is that. It’s primarily a Drug War case:
This pathetic outcome is all that is left of a federal prosecution that threatened Martinez with up to 20 years in federal prison, portraying her as a taxpayer-bilking drug pusher.
The article explains how the government’s entire case was “gutted”, but although Martinez “wanted to keep fighting, but she ‘had run out of money’ and assets, having ‘lost her home in the process of defending herself against the charges.’”