The Bogus $100 Billion Medicare / Medicaid Fraud Claim: The Real Problem is Profiteering

[kpete]

The Bogus $100 Billion Medicare / Medicaid Fraud Claim: The Real Problem is Profiteering:
By Dave Lindorff

The president’s incendiary claim that there is $100 billion in waste and fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid program is way off the mark. --- If the president were serious about the problem, he would call for an honest investigation to make certain that everyone potentially eligible for medical coverage and assistance in both programs gets the full benefits to which they are entitled, to minimize inadvertent overpayments to providers, and to prosecute to the full extent of the law those who defraud either program. --- --- That would be fine and appropriate. But at the same time, the president is also disingenuous in the extreme when he just attacks fraud and waste in Medicare and Medicaid, as though there is not massive fraud and waste in the private insurance industry and the rest of the medical industry. --- --- --- Indeed, much of the fraud in the Medicare program is in that part of it that is contracted out to the private insurance firms that offer the so-called MediGap insurance policies. Nearly all the rest of the actual fraud is perpetrated by private physicians, private hospitals and by other medical industry firms and pharmaceutical companies, which submit false invoices and charge for services and goods not delivered. And as CBS’s “60-Minutes” program and other news organizations have reported, there has been little or no effort devoted to prosecution of such fraud, though it totals in the tens of billions of dollars per year. --- --- --- That’s not a problem with “government-run health care”--a bogeyman that the president regularly pulls out to pillory--but with private healthcare. --- --- --- The president knows this, but since his whole “reform” proposal is built around the private insurance sector, he’s not going to say that. --- Then again, what political strategist guru in the White House came up with the idea that attacking alleged “waste and fraud” in “government health care” would be a good way to win support for Obamacare?


more:
http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/?q=node/492

[havocmom]

1. Former Senator Bill Frist's family business got a huge fine for Medicare fraud

It happens, but the Beltway Boys don't seem to want to talk about the big-time crooks who cost us so much. Honor among thieves?

When we went to huge medical clinic corporations and mega hospital corporations thrown in with Insurance giants, should have seen trouble coming.

[SharonAnn]

2. Yes, I think it totalled something like $1.7 BILLION. Almost unimaginable

And at that time his father was Chairman of the Board, his brother was President, and he was a Senator.

[The Magistrate]

3. Exactly, Ma'am; The Chief Source Of Fraud Is For Profit Providers

[leftstreet]

4. K&R

[slipslidingaway]

5. knr nt