Monday, October 26, 2009

Find the Fraud…

We are told by the current administration that there is billions of dollars in fraudulent activity in Medicare and Medicaid that will help fund healthcare “reform”. My question is; if we know the fraud is there why does the government not stop it now? Which then brings me to another question; if there are billions of dollars of fraudulent activity going on in these programs, why would we allow the government to take over the entire healthcare system?

I could expand on this thought but I find these two questions say it all…

2 comments:

Unknown said...

wow! great questions! I wonder where the fraud is coming from. Have you read anything that talks about that? Let me know if you do! I'm trying to learn about all of this!

Rich said...

Stephanie: The issue is clearly a huge problem that needs to be fixed before we even consider puting more bureaucrats in charge...

"According to Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute, experts estimate that "abuses of Medicaid (alone) eat up at least 10 percent of the program’s total cost nationwide -- a waste of $30 billion a year. Unscrupulous doctors billing for over 24 hours per day of procedures, phony companies invoicing for phantom services, pharmacists filling prescriptions for dead patients, home health-care companies demanding payment for treating clients actually in the hospital -- on and on the rip-offs go."

The cheating is brazen because scam artists have figured out that years of lax oversight have made Medicaid easy plunder, according to Malanga.
On April 22, 2009, Government Accountability Office officials testified before an ad-hoc Congressional subcommittee at a hearing entitled, "Eliminating Waste and Fraud in Medicare and Medicaid."

The GAO investigation identified several weaknesses with the current process for reviewing Medicare claims. Limitations in the number of medical reviews conducted leave the home health benefit -- within the Medicare program -- vulnerable to improper payments, including payments resulting from fraud and abuse."