HC Reform Update from Mark Sanna: By inventing 118 bogus health clinics in 25 states, prosecutors said, a band of Armenian-American gangsters billed Medicare for more than $100 million, and managed to collect $35 million over at least four years. The US attorney in Manhattan, called it the “single largest Medicare fraud ever perpetrated by a single criminal enterprise.” Eighteen people were charged in the Medicare indictment unsealed on Wednesday, part of a larger ring of 44 people prosecutors said had engaged in a variety of swindles, including bilking auto insurance companies by falsifying, staging or exaggerating the severity of fender-benders. Charges included racketeering, health care fraud, identity theft, money laundering and bank fraud. Forty-one of the defendants had been arrested as of Wednesday afternoon.