Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of the troubled blood-testing startup Theranos, is now prohibited from participating in federal health programs for a whopping nine decades, as per an announcement from the health department on Friday.
This exclusion means that Holmes can't get any payments from federal health programs for the things she does or makes. This is a big limitation on her ability to work in the health care business. It also stops her from being a part of Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal health care programs. This exclusion is basically for the rest of her life, considering she's 39 right now.
Inspector General Christi Grimm from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office of Inspector General was the one who announced this.
Holmes is currently serving an 11-year, three-month sentence for tricking investors of her blood-testing startup, Theranos. She started the company in 2003, claiming she had a special technology that could do lots of medical tests with just a tiny drop of blood from a finger prick. This claim made her company seem super valuable, reaching $9 billion in 2014. But it turns out, the technology didn't actually work, and the company failed in 2018. She got convicted of fraud in 2022.
In today's news, the health department mentioned that the minimum time someone like Holmes should be excluded for is only five years, according to the law. However, they look at other things too, like how long the fraud went on, the prison sentence length, and the amount of money ordered to be paid back. In addition to her 11-year prison term, Holmes was told to pay about $452,047,200 in restitution, according to HHS-OIG.
"Having accurate and reliable diagnostic testing technology is really important for our public health. Making false statements about how good these medical products are can harm patients and make people not trust our health care system," Grimm said. "As technology gets better, we're working harder to keep patients safe, and HHS-OIG will keep using its power to exclude people to protect the public from those who do bad things."
HHS-OIG also excluded Ramesh Balwani, the former President of Theranos, from federal health programs for 90 years. Balwani was also found guilty of fraud and is serving a nearly 13-year sentence