President Donald Trump has nominated acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling to be the next Secretary of Labor. Sonderling, a former Republican member of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Sonderling was formerly an attorney with Gunster, Yoakley, & Stewart, PA, West Palm Beach, Florida. If confirmed, Sonderling would replace the former Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, who resigned amid lurid accusations of sex with a subordinate and drinking on the job, among others.
The Labor Department has long been likened to a cesspool of corruption, especially its Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs. OWCP administers the Labor Department’s Federal Employees’ Compensation Act, which provides medical and other benefits, including salary replacement payments, to injured federal workers.
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During the Reagan administration, J. Peter Grace, chairman of the President’s Private Sector Survey on Cost Control, found multiple deficiencies in OWCP and FECA that resulted in fraud and abuse.
Grace found that the Labor Department did not correlate specific federal workplace injuries or disabilities with medically established recovery periods. This failure allowed “injured” federal workers to receive government benefits, including 66% of their federal salaries and other benefits, for years longer than in the private sector. “The Government does not make use of comprehensive experience data to aid in identifying possible abuse,” Grace said in his 1984 report, “War on Waste.”
Grace’s commission also found that the Labor Department did not require that “the medical credentials of physicians certifying disability be verified as a prerequisite to claim payment.” Under the FECA, the definition of “physician” includes chiropractors, clinical psychologists, and optometrists, among others. The American Chiropractic Association informs its members that they are “physicians.”
In 2022, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) vetoed AB2236, which would have allowed optometrists to perform certain eye surgeries. AB2236 would have redefined optometrists.
“I am not convinced that the education and training required is sufficient to prepare optometrists to perform the surgical procedures identified [in AB2236],” Newsom said. “This bill would allow optometrists to perform advanced surgical procedures with less than one year of training. In comparison, physicians who perform these procedures must complete at least a three-year residency program.” This was a rare display of wisdom by Newsom.
Under the FECA, unless procedures were changed under Chavez-DeRemer or former acting Secretary Julie Su, an optometrist may bill taxpayers as an “optometrist” or as a “physician.” Optometrists are not ophthalmologists with medical degrees. Sonderling would be wise to review how his agency polices the FECA and “physician” optometrists. Like Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, Sonderling should eliminate medical fraud and waste in the Labor Department’s programs, especially the FECA.
Fraud in FECA cuts both ways. Federal employees and the Labor Department authorized U.S. medical examiners to defraud taxpayers. Columnist Victor Reisel once reported that a U.S. medical examiner had double-billed taxpayers and private insurance for medical services for years!
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Most recently, a San Francisco physician went to federal prison for coaching federal employees to claim workers’ compensation benefits for fake emotional disabilities. He paid a fine of $1.4 million. The federal investigation into the case was limited to the Bay Area. I urge Sonderling and Labor’s Inspector General Anthony D’Esposito to reopen the case and expand the investigation into fake emotional disabilities by federal workers nationally.
The Reagan administration’s war on waste, headed by Grace, was over 20 years ago. Headlines tell us that healthcare fraud and federal employees claiming fake emotional disabilities are national problems that require a government-wide response. Sonderling should win one for The Gipper and drain the swamp at the U.S. Department of Labor.
James Patterson is a writer based in Washington, D.C.
