An ex-Bucks County doctor who made millions giving out ‘goody bags’ of unnecessary pills was sentenced to 14 years in prison

A former Bucks County doctor who was convicted earlier this year of pushing patients to accept “goody bags” of medically unnecessary sedatives so that he could recoup millions in fraudulent billings was sentenced Tuesday to 14 years in prison.

Neil K. Anand, 48, was found guilty by a federal jury in April of requiring patients to accept bags of drugs they didn’t want or need in order to receive the pain-killing opioid prescriptions they were actually seeking when they visited his Bensalem clinic.

Anand provided the superfluous drugs without sufficiently evaluating patients, or in some cases without providing instructions or dosage information, prosecutors said. He also prescribed more than 20,000 unnecessary oxycodone pills.

His aim was clear, prosecutors said: The schemes helped him defraud insurers out of more than $2 million. And prosecutors said he was aware of his misconduct — using sophisticated methods to determine which drugs would yield the largest reimbursement payments, and seeking to transfer more than $1 million of his illicit proceeds into a newly created bank account to benefit his daughter once he found out he was under federal investigation.

Anand vehemently disputed the government’s allegations, and continued to do so after his conviction. He and his relatives said in court Tuesday that his compassion for patients had been unfairly criminalized — that he’d dedicated his life to helping people, including by treating victims of the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001, and then enlisting in the U.S. Navy as a physician.

His sister — also a doctor who sometimes worked at Anand’s clinic — accused some patients of committing perjury at Anand’s trial, saying she knew they’d been evaluated before having prescriptions filled, even though they testified otherwise before a jury.

And Anand said he sought to treat patients in “real, relentless, ravaging pain,” and that he took actions out of mercy that were later described as malpractice.

“The law has spoken for now, but the deeper questions remain: What is healing? What is justice? Where’s the line between mercy and misconduct?” he said.

U.S. District Judge Chad F. Kenney said he believed Anand had grown to be motivated by greed and illicit profits and not the needs of his patients.

“For you, their pain was your gain,” Kenney said. “You were not focused during this period on treating your patients.”

Anand was charged in 2019 with crimes including healthcare fraud and conspiracy to distribute controlled substances. Prosecutors said Anand required patients at his pain clinic to accept the so-called “goody bags” of unnecessary pills in order to receive the drugs — typically oxycodone — they were seeking to treat chronic or debilitating pain.

Anand’s practice gave the goody bags out for free, prosecutors said, routing them through companies that he also owned and based inside his practice.

He recouped about $2.3 million in fraudulent billings from insurers including Medicare between 2015 and 2019, prosecutors said. And when he found out he was being investigated, they added, he sent about half that windfall into a bank account in his father’s name, with the intent that it be shielded for his young daughter.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Paul J. Koob said Anand “perpetuated the opioid epidemic to line his own pockets,” and that he had not accepted responsibility for ripping off insurers and misleading some of his patients (Anand’s medical license was suspended amid the prosecution and his attorney said it would almost certainly be revoked).

“He did not view [patients] as people,” Koob said. “They were vehicles of profit.”

Kenney, the judge, said Anand’s history showed that he’d once been a model physician. But somewhere along the way, Kenney said, Anand lost sight of the values that initially drove him, and instead he became focused on “swindling” insurers and “disregarding the actual needs of your patients.”

“You were gaming a legitimate system,” Kenney said.