One Man’s Years-Long Quest to Get Quest

Health-care executive Andrew Baker has an idea to help tame both the nation’s soaring medical bills and its towering federal deficits. He wants the government to crack down on what he says is a pattern of kickbacks in the medical testing business. The alleged scheme costs American taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, he claims. And if the federal government buys his allegations, Baker stands to pocket millions.

Baker has laid out his accusations in a lawsuit against Quest Diagnostics, one of the largest medical testing labs in the U.S. The former chief executive officer of a lab company that Quest acquired, Baker accuses the Madison (N.J.) corporation of cutting prices for major private insurance companies in exchange for the insurers pressing physicians to refer government-subsidized Medicare and Medicaid patients to Quest. The company denies any wrongdoing.