Medicare fraud in south Florida 'off the charts'

[unhappycamper]

Medicare fraud in south Florida 'off the charts'
By Jay Weaver | Miami Herald
Posted on Tuesday, July 13, 2010

As the feds squeeze tighter, South Florida's Medicare schemers have scurried into new territory to loot hundreds of millions of dollars from taxpayers, now billing the system for bogus mental health, physical therapy and other rehabilitation services.

The magnitude of the region's fraud is astonishing: Florida mental health clinics submitted $421 million in bills to Medicare last year -- about 63 times higher than Michigan and four times higher than Texas, both also hotbeds of healthcare rackets, according to government records.

Florida facilities billed $310 million for physical and speech therapy -- 140 times more than New York and 10 times more than California, records show.

Not all of that activity is criminal. But Florida's numbers are so much higher than other major states' that officials say the only logical explanation is fraud -- the bulk of it in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Law enforcement and healthcare officials say that mental health and rehabilitation providers are the latest agents of pervasive theft in South Florida, long considered the nation's epicenter of Medicare corruption. The services are not needed or provided, yet the federal program for the elderly and disabled still foots the bill.

[ixion]

1. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties constitute a toxic swamp

of the worst humanity has to offer, in my opinion. I lived in Miami-Dade for a year-and-a-half, and have worked in Broward and Palm Beach. It's actually one endless stretch of interstate. The area is violent and dirty and largely corrupt, again, in my opinion.

[Edweird]

4. I currently live in Miami and hate it.

I lived in Palm Beach County for the first 10 years in the state and loved it.

[cornermouse]

2. Just a minute.

I'm not saying there isn't fraud but there are a couple of things missing from that report that I would need to see before I would condem them as wholeheartedly as you.

Since its my understanding that Florida has become a mecca of sorts for the retirement community, I would like to know a statistic comparing the percentage of elderly population in Florida and the percentage of elderly population in other states. The elderly require more physical and speech therapy than the normal population.

I would also like to know if this is part of ARRA where the "recovery" company gets paid on the basis of the $ amounts of claims they decide are incorrect. As far as I'm concerned, if you want to find future corruption, you don't need to look any further than this program.

[Edweird]

3. No doubt about it, South Florida is loaded with corruption.

[raccoon]

5. My mother always said Medicare should be audited strictly. Said that about 10 years ago. nt