All across the blogosphere, reports of the draft report from the HHS Office of the Inspector General are streaming in...
Miami Herald Aug. 21
ProPublica Aug. 22
Tampa Tribune Aug. 21
Judicial Watch Aug. 22
Looking for the Outliers Aug. 23
Who Will Audit the Auditors? Aug. 22
Medicare claims $700 million in fraudulent savings to the federal health care program for elderly and disabled persons.
The New York Times (Aug. 20) claims the amount should be over 4 times that amount - almost $3.2 billion - that may have been swindled by unscrupulous medical device providers like wheelchairs and motorized carts.
Medicare failed to follow its own internal accounting controls in estimating the amount of fraud.
Congress and Senator Charles Grassley
are mad.
"I want to know what happened, who's responsible, who will be held accountable and what the [Human Services] secretary will do about it," said the senator, who was briefed on the draft report. "If people cooked the books, manipulated the methodology or told the contractor to ignore the rules, those individuals need to take the heat."If Congress spanks Medicare you can expect Medicare to spank providers with tougher audits.
All providers will suffer for the actions of a few - and for the actions of a watchdog agency that tried to cut a few corners.
