Mihai Lucan, the Pay for Play Doctor
After many years of communist rule, the widespread consensus for many is that corruption is part and parcel of the Romanian ethos. It is, simply put, something that is all part of the cost of doing business in Romania. This is how we get “thieves that get the job done”, “local barons”, and general appreciation for those that get ahead while skirting the law.
And yet, there are some things that few if any Romanians are ready to sacrifice for the status quo and right at the very top of that list is their health. Healthcare is one of the great uniting factors in Romania, taking tens of thousands to the streets if need arises. So when the unstoppable force of corruption hits the immovable object that is the just desire of people for decent healthcare outrage erupts that can shake Romania to the very core. A prime minister was toppled by the mismanagement of the wounded and dying in the aftermath of the Colectiv Club Fire. Ex-President Băsescu, perhaps the most cunning political animal in the past 29 years of Romanian Democracy, had to back away, tail between his legs after twelve thousand people took to the streets in defence of a sacked popular emergency physician. An untouchable luminary of paediatric surgery was cast out of the profession and is under criminal charges when details arose of the “experiments” he used to run on his patients. So it is perhaps unsurprising that press, prosecutors and police alike mobilised as one when the extent of medical luminary Professor Mihai Lucan’s crimes against healthcare and the state were revealed.
Professor Mihai Lucan is a world-renowned physician and renal transplant surgeon, decorated by the Pope himself. He now stands accused of defrauding the Romanian state for over one million euros as well as a bevy of even more heinous crimes.
Lucan made his name as a surgeon in Bucharest, but he became famous as the head of the Cluj-Napoca Urology and Transplant Institute, a state-funded institution he managed to bankrupt. At first Lucan ran his business directly through the Institute but soon he found a way to make considerably more money by siphoning off patients to his own private clinic, called LukMed. Built on a parcel of land donated by Cluj City Hall, between 2007 and 2017 LukMed was one of the most profitable medical institutions in Romania thanks to Lucan’s secret recipe for success — stealing from the state.
As the owner of a private surgery clinic and the head of the Urology and Transplant Institute, Lucan would only transfer patients from the state institution for the lucrative surgical intervention. The tests, pre-op and post-op care would be handled by the Institute, which had to shoulder all the risks of post-op care for small state-reimbursed sums while Lucan would charge for transplants at his own private facility upwards of €1,500 for Romanians and up to €300,000 for foreigners. LukMed, a private firm, was quintessentially pay to play. Despite Romania’s single-payer medical system, dozens of patients came forward complaining that their interventions and even life-saving transplant procedures had been conditioned by their paying of large sums of money. Those who wiggled onto the transplant registry often did so by selling off their houses at Lucan’s behest to pay for the privilege.
Even when the patient could not afford to pay, Lucan would begrudgingly settle for smaller amounts or payment in kind in the shape of “gifts”. In one horrifying tale, the nurses urged a young girl to paint portraits of Lucan to ensure her receiving the care she needed. And those that crossed Lucan paid the price, with the good doctor not being above sabotaging a transplant to try and frame a colleague for malpractice. So much for “above else, do no harm”.
This money-siphoning machine headed by Lucan and his son operated for more than a decade, without anybody in the Cluj medical scene even lifting an eyebrow. But this all came to an abrupt stop in late 2016 when the money well started to run dry as the Institute verged on bankruptcy. The lack of performance of the institute resulted from the siphoning off cases meant less money from the government. This, along with LukMed not paying any of its bills to the Institute and Lucan ordering expensive cutting-edge surgery equipment for the state-owned Institute and downright stealing it and taking it to his private facility sealed the institute’s fate. The equipment’s maintenance was, of course, paid by the state.
But the gravy train didn’t last for long. The Ministry of Health appointed a new management and Lucan was stripped of his position and academic rank. In any other country that would be enough for somebody to be cast out of their profession. Romanians, however, can often abide a famous crook who gets the job done, so Lucan kept up his practice, this time in Bucharest while urging his friends in high places to protect him. But Lucan’s alleged crimes were too heinous to pass over even in Romania. Soon people started coming forward talking about how Lucan and his accomplices were literally engaging in organ trafficking, duping young men into selling off their kidneys for large sums then holding on to most of the proceeds. Others got preferential treatment on the transplant registry directly proportional to the size of their pocketbook or their fame.
So, in December 2017, right before Christmas, prosecutors officially indicted Lucan and Romania’s special anti-organized crime body (DIICOT) paid a house call to the good doctor. When the DIICOT descended on the Lucan household they found €600,000 in cash and Lucan’s panicked son in law trying to jump the fence with a backpack full of euros and gold watches, after hiding another €10,000 in the gas tank of the car. When Lucan was summoned to appear before prosecutors in Bucharest he dropped a €5,000 wad of bills from his pocket on his way out, money promptly confiscated by the authorities. This would perhaps all seem hilarious if not for the grim realisation that all that money recovered had been stolen from the healthcare system or fleeced from desperate people in the direst need, who sold off their houses to receive the medical attention they had already paid for through taxes.
Investigations are ongoing in the Lucan case, and soon the good doctor will have his first date in court.
