I'm Right Again Dot Comu
I'm Right Again Dot Com
A new commentary every Wednesday - June 1, 2016
MEDICARE FRAUD
The Medicare program was established to insure that the health and medicinal needs of our Nation's aging population were met. Unfortunately, crooked doctors, hospitals, nursing homes, drug companies and other medical care providers, plus a number of expert scam artists, who've been attracted by the expansion of enrollees in the Affordable Care (Obamacare) Act, are stealing money at an astonishing rate and an unsustainable amount.
Federal investigators have been overwhelmed by the volume of fraud; by "doctors," home health care providers, hospice care fraudsters, wheelchair scammers and illicit prescription writers.
Joe Eaton, writer for the The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) Bulletin claims that thieves are making off with $60-billion a year of our tax money, and that is only an educated guess. Schemes include a variety of billing fraud scams, the principal one being billing for services that was never provided to a patient. Worse, others include performing unnecessary therapy and surgery—sometimes by persons posing as "doctors," who are not licensed physicians.
AARP identified one doctor, Jaques Roy, who has been convicted of leading a $375-million Medicare fraud. He set up a system of paying homecare workers $50 a head for recruiting homeless persons to sign up for non-existent services. By the time he was caught, his company had signed up 11,000 Medicare beneficiaries.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have just begun to get a handle on the problem. Simply by checking state and federal medical license databases, it has succeeded in removing an incredible number—over 500,000—so called "providers" from the billing system. (That number causes me to so wish to use at least one exclamation mark!)
You may wish to know that you may be able to help in this campaign. When the Federal Government is successful in recovering funds taken by Medicare Fraud, 30 percent of the recovered amount is paid to the whistle blower(s) who initiate(s) the action.
The internet can provide a number of attorneys who will be glad to let you share any reward with them. I suggest that If you have a question, contact the Office of the Inspector General. 1-800-447-8477, or http://www.cms.gov and put the word "fraud" in the search window.
-Phil Richardson, Observer of the human condition and storyteller. "He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself." - Joseph L. Menchen
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