NEW YORK---An Amagansett physician has been charged with writing hundreds of illegal prescriptions for patients from the Bronx and Manhattan, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars in medically unnecessary Medicaid billings.

The doctor, Michael Chait, M.D., 46, allegedly wrote prescriptions that put huge quantities of highly addictive and dangerous painkillers worth millions of dollars on the black market. Chait was arrested for unlawfully selling unnecessary narcotic prescriptions - including OxyContin, a synthetic form of morphine, and Dilaudid to Medicaid recipients who traveled from New York City to his practice in the Town of East Hampton on the eastern end of Long Island.

Prosecutors say that between Jan. 1 and March 7, Chait saw up to 50 patients per day, many of whom were Medicaid recipients from New York City who were driven to his office to pay cash for the prescriptions. Once purchased, patients would return and use their Medicaid cards to obtain the controlled medications from pharmacies in the Bronx and Manhattan.

"This was a case of physician-assisted drug dealing, a doctor-turned-dealer poisoning our citizens for profit and violating that most basic of medical oaths: do no harm," Attorney General Andrew Cuomo said. "There couldn't be a more reprehensible abuse of Medicaid than using taxpayer dollars to subsidize the black market for prescription drugs."

Chait, who maintained a medical practice at 524 Montauk Highway, Amagansett, was charged in a felony complaint filed in East Hampton Town Justice Court. He is charged with: second and fourth degree conspiracy, second degree grand larceny and six counts of criminal sale of a prescription for a controlled substance. 3-14-07

© 2007 North Country Gazette