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Feds ignored Medicare scam warnings for years
A-Pee article. Rest at link.For three years, the federal agency in charge of preventing Medicare fraud repeatedly ignored internal watchdog warnings about swindlers stealing millions of dollars by scamming several programs, documents show. Look into the bank accounts of the decision makers. Check into their lifestyles and major purchases and posessions. Look into who they answered to and were friends with. Until they are dead. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services received roughly 30 warnings from inspectors over three years mostly under the Bush administration but didn't respond to half of them, even after repeated letters, according to records provided to The Associated Press by U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley's office. Mostly under the W administration. And I suppose proportionally about an eighth of them under the Obama administration. I guess it could be argued that they are technically correct. But what is the purpose of this statement? I'm sure this didn't start yesterday, but over the last year Medicare fraud has bloomed about threefold, if that means anything more than that most of the reports came from the W administration timeframe. A July 2008 warning said organized crime had infiltrated the system and was costing more than $1 million dollars for each phony Medicare provider license the crooks obtained. The letter got no response, Grassley said. Guido! Get our technician to fix that CT scanner over at the General Hospital pronto! We're losing $12,000 an hour here! He and other critics said lack of oversight in the federally administered program is part of an estimated $60 billion a year in Medicare fraud. "There's no good answer for why the bureaucracy turned a blind eye, and it's a breach of the public trust," said Grassley, an Iowa Republican and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee. Oh, I'm sure there's an answer though, even if it's not good. Find it. Fighting the fraud is key for the Obama administration, which hopes to pay for a large chunk of its proposed national health care overhaul by cracking down on those who cheat Medicare. There are better ways to fight fraud than to set up a system that will be used to generate other types of fraudulent waste and privacy invasions. Get to work on the individual issues, not the whole thing. Posted by: gorb 2009-11-15 |
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