Medicare does not regularly review bills for accuracy and to prevent fraud
Cost savings through reduction of waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare system being offered as a key funding source for health care reform currently under consideration on Capitol Hill. Ironically, eliminating this corruption would require Medicare to adopt private-sector reforms, says the Heartland Institute.
- Fraud is rampant and unchecked throughout the Medicare system, while private carriers do a much better job of preventing it.
- Private carriers spend a lot on efforts [to prevent fraud], raising their administrative expenses in the process.
Many Medicare abuses happen in the market for durable medical equipment (DME), such as wheelchairs and oxygen equipment. A draft OIG audit released in August 2008 flagged almost a third of the 2006 DME claims sampled as having been improperly reimbursed.According to a July report by the Government Accountability Office:
- Medicare paid as much as $92 million since 2000 for equipment purportedly prescribed by doctors who were dead.
- Claimants have submitted counterfeit documents, forged doctors' signatures, and filed bills on behalf of patients who were dead or had never been seen by the prescribing physician.
[The obviouse thing to do is move away from our private system and reward government with more of the business.
Its got nothing to do with health 'care'.]
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