rare2findd asked: AP Nov 15,2009
WASHINGTON – The government paid more than $47 billion in questionable Medicare claims including medical treatment showing little relation to a patients condition, wasting taxpayer dollars at a rate nearly three times the previous year.
Excerpts of a new federal report, obtained by The Associated Press, show a dramatic increase in improper payments in the $440 billion Medicare program that has been cited by government auditors as a high risk for fraud and waste for 20 years.
It’s not clear whether Medicare fraud is actually worsening. Much of the increase in the last year is attributed to a change in the Health and Human Services Department’s methodology that imposes stricter documentation requirements and includes more improper payments — part of a data-collection effort being ordered government-wide by President Barack Obama this coming week to promote “honest budgeting” and accurate statistics.
Still, the fiscal 2009 financial report — covering the first few months of the Obama administration — highlights the challenges ahead for a government that is seeking in part to pay for its proposed health care overhaul by cracking down on Medicare fraud. While noting that several new anti-fraud efforts were beginning, the government report makes clear that “aggressive actions” to date aimed at reducing improper payments had yielded little improvement.
In recent years, the suspect claims have included Medicare prescriptions from doctors who were dead, and requests for payment for medical supplies such as blood glucose strips for sexual impotence and diabetic shoes for leg amputees. Patients, many of them new citizens who barely speak English, are sometimes recruited by brokers who go door-to-door offering hundreds of dollars for use of their Medicare numbers.
Obama is expected to announce new initiatives this coming week to help crack down on Medicare fraud, including a government-wide Web site aimed at providing a fuller account of health care spending and improper payments made by various agencies. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also will launch a Web interactive next month that will allow users to track Medicare payment information by categories such as state, diagnosis and hospital.
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So this itime its not a ‘recipient’. The big big money as usual,, lines the pockets of the big time crooks who inflate the medical system with criminal illegal monetary gains.
47 billion ~~ or 47,000,000,000.00 ~~ or forty seven billion ~~~ all of the representations add up to the same. In fact, that figure only represents what government has uncovered. LIkely there are billions more that will never be discovered.
Will you protest, or will you keep your head in the sand?
true mike. but the majority of those involved in food stamp abuse are not the actual recipient. You realize of course, that for the unscrupulous and kmowledgeable, food stamps can be quite profitable, in fact much of them have been used to purchase just about anything, including houses. You see, its the Big money hoods who reap the benefits.
Not the mother of 2 or 3 scraping by on 300 dollars a month in cash benefits, 250 a month in food stamps, and if she are lucky, a voucheror two to help pay for gas or oil in the winter months.
One hand washes the other. But its usually those who wear the Rolex. and the Armani suits who fk over the little man and the indigent as they sloth like snakes all the way to the bank.
