Medicare Waste, Fraud, and Abuse Means the System Needs Reform

An office manager in Louisiana who billed Medicare for services that weren't needed or even provided was recently sentenced to four years in prison and ordered to pay $14.1 million in restitution. Twelve other defendants are awaiting sentencing for their roles in the $50 million scheme to defraud Medicare. The next day, a Detroit-area physician was sentenced to six years in prison and ordered to pay $2 million in restitution for his role in a $4.2 million Medicare fraud scheme.
Medicare is rife with fraud, and every year, billions of dollars are improperly paid out by the federal government's giant health care bureaucracy. According to the government's latest estimates, Medicare fee-for-service (parts A and B) made $46 billion in improper payments last year. And Medicare Advantage (Part C) and Medicare Prescription Drug Coverage (Part D) combined for another $15 billion in improper payments. Even more disturbing is the possibility that these numbers underestimate the annual losses to taxpayers from fraud and bureaucratic bungling. According to the work of Harvard University's Malcolm Sparrow, fraud could account for as much as 20 percent of total federal health care spending, which would be considerably higher than what the government's figures indicate.

https://reason.com/archives/2015/11/26/medicare-waste-fraud-and-abuse-means-the