False reassurance is harder to measure than a copay, but for someone weighing eye surgery, it is the more consequential harm. What Medicare Patients Can Do NowThe useful response to a case like this is not alarm about eye care generally. Diagnostic testing before eye surgery is routine and often necessary, and this indictment concerns one practice. Prosecutors allege he conspired to bill Medicare for diagnostic eye tests that were duplicative or unnecessary, and paid kickbacks to ophthalmologists for patient referrals. Medicare patients referred for eye surgery who received diagnostic testing at the surgery center between at least 2015 and March 2023.