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Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Medicare And Medicaid Made $70 Billion In ‘Improper Payments’ Last Year

The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the federal health-care agency that is a key bureaucracy in implementing Obamacare—made at least $70.5 billion in “improper payments” last year.

These improper federal health-care payments amounted to more than the combined total of $68.3 billion spent by the entire Homeland Security and the State departments last year, which spent $44.5 billion and $23.8 billion respectively according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Medicare made at least $48 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010 and Medicaid made $22.5 billion, according to written testimony on "Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, Waste and Abuse" presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management by Kathleen King, director of health care for the Government Accountability Office.

The full amount of improper payments made by Medicare may be higher than $48 billion because the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not yet estimated the dollar amount of improper payments made by Medicare Part D, the prescription drug-benefit program.

A key element of Obamacare provides government health-insurance to lower income people by increasing the income threshold for Medicaid eligibility and putting more people on the Medicaid rolls.

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3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, we should let the government have full conrtrol of our health care. My guess is that most of that $48 billion went to some back room office that has to do with Barack's re-election campaigne for the democrats. Or at least to some of his cronies in Chicago, probably both.

Anonymous said...

I would say that a chunk of that 48 billion went to doctors who overbill and double bill medicare and medicaid!
The doctors doing so are a HUGE part of this problem. The other HUGE part is no oversight. Nobody's watching the checkbook!
Doctors are greedy and we all know what greed has done to this country!

Anonymous said...

Most doctors are highly skilled people that spend half their life in school to learn how to work on dopes like you 12:11. Most of them get out of college in debt up to their ears only to have the federal government step in and say you can only charge us 1/4 of what it's value is. A person changing the oil in your car is not nearly as valuble to the world as say someone who does surgery on an all to precious life.