- Medicare pays about $430 Billion per year in claims.
- $60 BILLION of that are fraudulent claims [ roughly 13.95%].
- It's not unusual for a fraud scheme to be in the range of $30 to $50 million.
- From 2000 to 2007 somewhere between $60 to $92 million was paid to fraud schemes involving dead doctors. Some of whom had been dead for 10 years.
Now let's take a moment to consider the so-called public option of the Health Care Reform bill. If the uninsured become insured under this public option, what will the fraud cost the taxpayers? $100 Billion a year? 300 billion? the sky's the limit?
Seriously, contact all your Congress Critters to express your concerns about this aspect of "reform."
That’s a good point you make about Medicare fraud, Holly. It is incredible how widespread Medicare fraud is. A good resource about the topic and tips on how Medicare recipients can prevent it can be found at http://www.planprescriber.com/Medicare/newsletter-nov2009-medicarefraud.html. Perhaps through better awareness, we can make a difference!
ReplyDeleteThe dems are going to fix it. They're going to reduce the fraud by half by cutting Medicare funding by half. That's to cover all the waste and fraud that'll occur with Obamacare.
ReplyDeleteGreat point, Hols. If the federal government can't run a program on the relatively limited scale of Medicare, how can anyone believe they could manage health care for 90% of the American public? Medicare is a hot mess, and anyone who says otherwise has not taken a close look at it.
ReplyDeleteUm... supposedly the administration is going to clean that up, THEN take an additional 500B or so... yeah, right... sigh...
ReplyDeleteI work for a physician. Whenever we accept a new patient we have to make a copy of their insurance card(s), a list of any medications they're taking, AND a copy of a photo ID. If their insurance company requests a copy of their med recs, the photo ID MUST BE included. More paperwork for us but, perhaps, a way of tracing fraud. A little late but hey there you have it.
ReplyDeleteThanks for coming over Friday, Hols. Was so wonderful to see you, and I want to see you again very, very soon. *HUGS*
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