Medicaid and Medicare Fraud
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Medicare and Medicaid fraud: An overview
Medicare and Medicaid fraud: An overview
While there is still little consensus regarding the best ways to go about enacting healthcare reform, one issue that unites both Democrats and Republicans is the need to eliminate Medicaid and Medicare waste, fraud and abuse. According to a 2009 CBS News report: "One tiny pharmacy in a Hialeah [Florida] strip mall went from billing Medicare $13,000 in May to billing nearly a million dollars a month later," and regulators took no notice (Rosen & Bach 2009:1). It has been estimated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) the fraudulent billings to public and private health care programs are 3 -- 10% of total health spending, $75 -- $250 billion per year on average, and that is only the fraud that is currently known (Morris 2009: 1351). Although federal authorities have tried to grow more vigilant, health care fraud is becoming increasingly difficult to detect. Approximately $60 billion of the total costs of healthcare fraud have been linked to Medicaid and Medicare, at direct cost to taxpayers (Taitsman 2011). "Since 1990, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has designated Medicare as a high-risk federal program because its vast size and complexity make it vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse" (Iglehart 2010).
This fraud is perpetrated not only by unscrupulous patients and criminals, but also by physicians. One manufacturer of a prostate-cancer drug, for example, told urologists that they could bill Medicare for the free samples "though federal law prohibits physicians both from billing for free samples…Several urologists ended up paying tens of thousands of dollars in penalties for participating in the manufacturer's plan" (Taitsman 2011). Undeterred by fines, professional sanctions, or even civil or criminal legal system, physicians every year are found guilty of "accepting kickbacks, upcoding...
When physicians are found guilty of such crimes, patients suffer. Many doctors are already reluctant to take patients under the government-provided public insurance plans of Medicaid and Medicare, particularly Medicaid, given that its reimbursement rates tend to be quite low, compared with private insurance and even Medicare. Yet "more than 5000 physicians are currently excluded from participation in the federal health care programs because of these types of violations and cannot treat any of the approximately 100 million Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries" (Taitsman 2011). Some doctors may even engage in fraudulent activities because they believe they are 'owed' more for their Medicare and Medicaid services, due to lower rates of reimbursement.
While some physicians engage in fraud out of
greed, others do so out of ignorance. There is little
education for physicians in the administrative aspects of
negotiating the often complex aspects of government insurance programs. Only 44% of deans and 2/3rds of administrators at medical schools and medical residency programs "reported that their institutions provide at least some
training on fraud and
abuse for students, residents, or fellows" (Taitsman 2011). There is also little consistency regarding the quality of education within programs regarding Medicaid and Medicare law. The Office of
Inspector General (OIG) of the Department of Health and
Human Services has created a document for new physicians entitled "A roadmap for new physicians: Avoiding Medicare and Medicaid fraud and abuse," summarizing the major acts of
legislation with which they should be familiar, such as False Claims Act, the Anti-Kickback Statute, and the Stark Law (Taitsman 2011).
It is not only doctors who are unwittingly or knowingly complicit in fraud. City of Angels Medical Center in
Los Angeles, California actually "recruited homeless people off the street to fill their empty beds, offering…
