By snoadmin
Released earlier this week, a study done by the United States Government Accountability Office demonstrated that there are major oversight gaps in the Medicare and Medicaid systems.
As the Associated Press reported, the government is putting billions of Medicare dollars at risk by authorizing fictitious sellers of medical supplies to submit reimbursement claims without a thorough review of the claims.
At a time when everyone’s wallets are hurting, especially us starving students, this waste of billions of tax dollars seems to be a slap in the face of everyone whose paycheck is severely cut by the little Medicare and Medicaid taxes printed at the bottom.
In response to the study, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will soon be raising quality standards. For instance, cell phone and pager numbers will no longer be accepted as a supplier’s primary business number.
But, as investigators in the GAO have noted, the CMS has had limited success through merely raising the standard of quality per claim.
If the government really wants to cut back on fraud and save billions of dollars each year, the CMS needs to be more proactive in its approach to finding cheaters.
Out of fear of stepping on doctors’ and patients’ toes or appearing draconian in nature, the CMS has remained fairly lax on its oversight of Medicare and Medicaid billing requests. Only when blatant frauds, like companies billing an unusually large amount of money to Medicare appear on record has the government taken action and investigated the cases.
Obviously, by keeping their fingers crossed and hoping no one will cheat the system in a quiet way, billions of dollars have been wasted over many years on fraudulent businesses that use the Medicare ID numbers of unwitting doctors and patients to cover medical expenses that are never administered to a patient or by a doctor.
To cut back on this Medicare fraud problem, the government needs to stay on the offensive.
Random audits of medical supply companies, for instance, could keep all businesses on their toes in regards to their own record keeping and scare potential cheaters away from trying to start fake companies.
Similarly, random questionnaires sent out to the addresses of patients and doctors who have billed Medicare could prevent any fraud from progressing past minimal claims and scare potential thieves away from stealing ID numbers.
Sure, audits and question forms may seem like a costly endeavor when saving money is the goal.
And, really, isn’t the point of ending fraud to save money?
But, considering an estimated $1 billion of the $10 billion (yup, 10 percent) in annual Medicare payments the government makes are used on equipment that has been deemed improper, spending some money — no matter how much — to end fraud now will save the entire country a lot of money in the long-run.
There are too many decent, honest citizens in this country and on this campus who could use the money that the government is frivolously wasting on greedy cheats to not try and put an end to Medicare fraud.
darlaerdaror