Medicare Frauds vs. Honest Providers

Recently, I watched as a TV news magazine show (I think it was CBS' 60 Minutes) described widespread fraud of the Medicare system. They focused on criminals who would set up a phony medical supply businesses and bill Medicare for supplies like wheel chairs and other equipment which were never purchased or sold to beneficiaries. All these crooks needed was the name, address, birthday and social security numbers of members of the public in order to make these charges. Medicare claimed that it was under an obligation to pay within thirty days and did not have enough staff to investigate more than a small fraction of claims. Most of these so called businesses closed after receiving payments and were never heard from again. One gangster they interviewed, who had stolen about $20 million, had been caught and was serving a substantial prison sentence. It sounded like he was the exception and not the rule.

Today, one of my medical providers told me that Medicare was at least three months behind on its payments to him. In addition, he did not talk to actual Medicare personnel, but to people from a third party contracted by Medicare to handle providers. This was another legacy of Bush era attempts to put more money into the hands of investors, as government functions were contracted out. This has placed another level of organization into the billing process and allowed additional businessmen the opportunity to steal from the tax payer.

The juxtaposition of these two situations shows me that Medicare is more interested in paying criminals than in paying honest medical providers. I urge everyone to contact their elected representatives and make it clear that this is not acceptable.