Ben Carson: Medical Fraud is Bad, Unless One of My Friends Does It

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Ben Carson really, really hates medical fraud. Seriously: “There would be some very stiff penalties for this kind of fraud,” he wrote a few years ago, “such as loss of one’s medical license for life, no less than ten years in prison, and loss of all of one’s personal possessions.”

Unless, that is, the fraudster happens to be Carson’s best and oldest friend. In that case, you write a letter to the judge saying, “there is no one on this planet that I trust more than Al Costa.” And it worked. Costa was a dentist who pleaded guilty to billing insurance companies for procedures he didn’t perform, but in the end the judge sentenced him only to a year of house arrest in his 8,300-square-foot mansion.

AP has the story here. But if you want some serious details about this whole case, Russ Choma has them right here at MoJo. Carson, needless to say, insists that Costa was innocent all along and was railroaded by the justice system. That’s how things work in Carsonworld. There’s the good guys and the bad guys, and Carson knows in his heart exactly who they are. As for facts, I guess they’re just chaff thrown out by secular progressives to destroy good Christians.

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

DONALD TRUMP & DEMOCRACY

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And we need your support like never before, to fight back against the existential threats American democracy faces. Fundraising for nonprofit media is always a challenge, and we need all hands on deck right now. We have no cushion; we leave it all on the field.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate