Medicare Fraud - Rampant

[TKshreve]

http://www.miamiherald.com/428/story/627480.html

http://www.freep.com/article/2010011...5M-feds-charge

http://www.detnews.com/article/20100...are-fraud-case

WOW......... just plain silly old WOW!

Every day I see more and more reasons to take the low road in theis country. Apparently breaking the law is how you get paid and enjoy it. This story has been in the news for 10+ years now and here we are still pissing money away into the hands of the corrupt and crooked. How do these situations continue in our nation? Can't anybody GET IT RIGHT?!?!?!?!




There is so much wrong with this situation I can't really express it in words. Perhaps shooting some of the crooks in the head would get me back to even keel, but I don't know.

• Minimal jail time [[probably even further reduced than we know)
• Talking a 20% fraud rate of dollars scammed to dollars spent by the Gov't
• Medicare continues to pay these faulty claims because it's not their money. It's the taxpayers! Yay! Fun Money!
• Medicare can't "afford" to screen or police this problem. Cuz you don't have the funding???!!!??!!!?!?!?!? OK! wtf
• This directly effects rising health care costs.
• Utter complete waste of money that is so badly needed in so many other places right now.
• Many, many people should be shot over this.
• Will it ever be fixed? Sad.

Spare me the "This is why Gov't shouldn't reform Health Care. They can't even get this right" comments. I will cyber-puke all over the place.



<Looking up> Plz help us. We need something positive....... now.

[Johnlodge]

All I can say to try to ease your frustration is that the fact you have these news stories of the feds charging on this case means somebody is at least being held accountable in this instance.

[Retroit]

This is why Gov't shouldn't reform Health Care. They can't even get this right.

[TKshreve]

Cute.

Here's hoping your medicare dollars end up in my pocket. Cheers!

[gazhekwe]

This is a case of that Alan Greenspan type vision. Corporate self interest will keep them from committing criminal or risky excesses.

It isn't the government's fault, unless you believe Medicare should pay for policing its transactions with presumably responsible doctors, clinics, hospitals, supply companies... That is reform! Wouldn't that seriously increase costs, and then we have to pay for prosecuting and punishing the criminals. We taxpayers just can't win, can we?

[maxx]

Here's some of the problem.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1823/

It's hard to believe that a bill that was passed in 2003 still was not implemented by 2008. Just shows you that if the public isn't watching the clowns in DC every minute, the sh!t goes on.

[mjs]

TKshreve, don't despair. If there was anything I learned from my period in law, is that even if people like that are rich, they're still miserable.

One of my professors once said, "If there's no consequences for it, its not morals." Any jerk off can follow the law when the law is enforced. True character comes out when one thinks they can get away with something.

Its like these yahoos who say I only do such and such because everyone is doing it or because such and such deserves to be scammed on. If a person's character depends on outside factors, then they don't understand what true character is so they can't achieve it so they'll never have any truelly close and real relationships which is what the experts know makes people happy.

So keep your friends and happiness and let them keep the fruits of their ill gotten gains.

[TKshreve]

Here's what I don't get:

If Medicare is being scammed out of 60 Billion dollars annually, can't they throw, say, 500 million at a preventative measure. 500 million should cover a lot of leg work on someones end. That could be 4000 people making $125,000 annually who are responsible for reviewing paperwork, verifying the integrity of these businesses and expediting these claims. That's a good, husky salary as well for 4000 people. It seems so simple, yet our goverment finds a way to complicate things. Not sure where the mix up is. In a time when hundreds of thousands of jobs get cut is the norm. In a time when you hear a company is bringing 800 jobs to an area [[tickertape parade to ensue). Here's a win/win situation and it just won't happen. SIGH.

Maxx: Thank you for the article, although it did not make my outlook on this subject any brighter. So funny to hear business owners feelings on the subject:

Robinson doesn’t support the bidding program because he fears it will drive down profit margins. “It probably will help get rid of the fraud because it will take care of a lot of the profit,� Robinson said. “The legitimate business people will have to run their business on a closer margin, but the thieves will move on. They will find some other way to scam the government.�

Soooooo........ you are fine with fraud as long as you get yours?? I guess that's America today. Pretty sad. I can't fault the guy for admitting that he want his paycheck [[and the fatter the better), but like the title suggests, public integrity is no longer ingrained within our culture. It's a feeding frenzy out there.


This snippet caught my eye as well regarding goverment oversight and prevention:

“If Congress fails to uphold even this modest effort at entitlement reform,� wrote Leavitt in The Wall Street Journal, “there is little reason to believe its members will muster the political courage for the unspeakably harder choices that await them.�

[Retroit]

Maybe people feel that as long as the government steals money out of our paychecks, it's okay to steal from the government in return.

[gazhekwe]

Well, they are really stealing from us, since we fund the government. Every dollar they steal has to be replaced by Guess Who?

[Retroit]

The Chinese.

[Papasito]

I know a woman who divorced and remarried, then had three children using her x husband's last name in order to use a 12 year old medicaid claim opened up during her previous child's birth back in 1997. The x husband tried to turn her in to Medicaid for fraud and they were not interested in doing anything about it, even though she now has a six figure household income.

[maxx]

This is why Gov't shouldn't reform Health Care. They can't even get this right.

Yeah, let's just get rid of all programs and laws that are broken and abused by criminals.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/articles/entry/1823/

The roots of the fight over durable medical equipment go back to 2003, when Congress authorized the Competitive Bidding Program as part of the Medicare Modernization Act. The bidding program required medical equipment suppliers to bid for Medicare contracts, overturning a system under which suppliers would automatically be paid under an established system of fees. Medicare officials expected competitive bidding would drive down prices and weed out fraudulent suppliers in an industry long plagued by shady storefront businesses, corrupt medical professionals, and organized crime.
The Government Accountability Office has concluded in numerous reports going back more than a decade that Medicare pays far higher than market rates for medical equipment. The federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services estimated that Medicare improperly paid $1 billion for durable medical equipment from April 2006 to March 2007, in part due to fraud, according to a 2008 GAO report...


Ashkenaz said the program will save money by forcing suppliers to compete — just as they do with other government agencies that use competitive bidding, including the Department of Defense. During the first round of competitive bidding back in 2008, Ashkenaz said, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services signed contracts with 325 suppliers, among the 1,005 suppliers who submitted bids. “Before the bidding program was delayed we found a savings of 26 percent,� he said.