A Jacksonville, Florida dentist has been accused of unnecessarily pulling children’s teeth while also ripping off Medicaid for millions of dollars.
Dr. Howard Schneider was recently served with 58 notices of intent to sue by former patients who say the dentist performed unwanted and unneeded dental procedures on their children.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office has opened a Medicaid fraud investigation into claims that date back for decades.
The lawsuits and investigations were launched shortly after Brandi Motley posted a photo on Facebook of her 6-year-old daughter and accusing Dr. Schneider of pulling seven teeth from the girl’s mouth after he ordered the mother from the examination room. As Ms. Motley recalled:
“The nurse suggested that it’s best, that kids act better when parents aren’t in the room, so they said, ‘We don’t like parents back here for the procedures.'”
Motley claims she then waited three hours (!) before a nurse informed her that her daughter had been involved in an “incident.” When Ms. Motley walked into the room where he daughter was, she said she found her hyperventilating and covered in blood:
“She takes her gauze out and I notice that all of her teeth were gone.”
Not long after Motley’s allegations went viral, another woman recognized Dr. Schneider as the same dentist who removed two of her partially blind 5-year-old son’s teeth after he came in for a crown. Amanda Barry, who is deaf, said her son was choked by the dentist as he screamed for his mother:
“That’s what bothers me the mos. Because I’m deaf, I can’t hear anything, and to know that my child was calling for me and my name and I couldn’t help him, it makes me feel, like, lousy. It makes me feel lousy.”
State records reveal that Dr. Schneider has received nearly $4 million in Medicaid reimbursements over the past five years.
Gust Sarris, an attorney for the families, said Schneider preyed on poor families in order to defraud the government:
“Medicaid paid him per tooth. So can I cap a tooth twice? Yes. Can I then pull it? Yes. Can I then successfully obtain benefits for all three? Absolutely.”
