In about 60 cases, the lawsuits demanded $100,000 or more from patients. Some patients were found liable for tens of thousands of dollars in interest charges or wound up shackled with debt that could take a decade or more to shake.
Backed by a major private equity firm, the bariatric practice spends millions each yearfeaturing patients who have dropped 100 pounds or more after bariatric procedures, sometimes having had a portion of their stomachs removed. The ads have run on TV, online and on New York City subway posters.
Danny De Voe, a partner at Sahn Ward Braff Koblenz law firm in Uniondale, New York, who filed many of those suits, declined to comment, citing attorney-client privilege. That “full amount” can be thousands of dollars higher than what insurers would likely pay, KFF Health News found — while legal fees and other costs can layer on thousands more.
The suit doesn’t include details to substantiate these claims, and Wallace said in her court response they are not true. Wallace said she turned over checks for the charges.In September, Wallace filed for bankruptcy, hoping to discharge the bariatric care debt along with about $4,700 in unrelated credit card charges.
Silver wants the medical practice to turn over records of the payments received from Wallace. “There is no fraud here,” he said. “This is frivolous. We are taking a no-settlement position.”Few patients sued by the bariatric practice mount a defense in court and those who do fight often lose, court records show.
Robert Cohen, a longtime attorney for the bariatric practice, testified in a November 2021 hearing that the lawyers take “a contingency fee of one-third of our recovery” in these cases. In that case, Cohen had requested $13,578 based on his contingency fee arrangement. He testified that he spent 7.3 hours on the case and that his customary billing rate was $475 per hour, which came to $3,467.50. The judge awarded the lower amount, according to a transcript of the hearing.
In a few cases, patients admitted pocketing checks they were obligated to turn over to the medical practice. But for the most part, court records don’t specify how many such checks were issued and for what amounts — or whether the patient improperly cashed them. She said contract “accelerator clauses” that trigger severe penalties if patients miss payments should not be permitted for medical debt.The debt collection lawsuits argue that weight loss patients had agreed to pay “fair market value” for services — and the doctors are only trying to secure money they are due.
But Rachel Kent, Fair Health’s senior director of marketing, told KFF Health News that the group “does not set rates, nor determine or take any position on what constitutes ‘usual and customary rates.’” Instead, it reports the prices providers are charging in a given area.
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