Close Your Eyes

by hilzoy

Is there any corner of the Bush administration -- any at all -- that isn't hopelessly corrupt? Actually, don't answer that...

"Medicare’s top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fraudulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system.

But according to a confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report, those claims of success, which earned Medicare wide praise from lawmakers, were misleading.

In calculating the agency’s rate of improper payments, Medicare officials told outside auditors to ignore government policies that would have accurately measured fraud, according to the report. For example, auditors were told not to compare invoices from salespeople against doctors’ records, as required by law, to make sure that medical equipment went to actual patients.

As a result, Medicare did not detect that more than one-third of spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies and other medical equipment in its 2006 fiscal year was improper, according to the report. Based on data in other Medicare reports, that would be about $2.8 billion in improper spending.

That same year, Medicare officials told Congress that they had succeeded in driving down the cost of fraud in medical equipment to $700 million.

Some lawmakers and Congressional staff members say the irregularities that the inspector general found were tantamount to corruption and raise broader questions about the credibility of other Medicare figures.

“This is outrageous,” said Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who has repeatedly credited the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with reducing improper expenditures. “If heads don’t roll, you can’t change the culture of this organization,” he added."

If you don't so much as try to detect fraud, you won't catch it. If you don't catch it, it will increase -- and why not, when you can get free money without risking anything? If it increases, not only do our costs go up, the apparent cost of expanding government programs to help the uninsured goes up as well, expanding those programs looks more expensive than it really is, and so the likelihood that we will actually do something to help people who are reduced to pulling out their rotting teeth with pliers goes down.

I want these people out of my government now.

Comments

[Anthony Damiani]

To date, I think the Post Office has avoided major public scandal.

I assume this is merely an oversight.

[DougEFresh]

I am pretty sure that medicare fraud pre dated the Bush administration

[ral]

Actually, don't answer that...

Must ... resist ... temptation...

[KCinDC]

Doug, I think we're all aware of that. The new thing appears to be specifically allowing fraud to go uncovered in order to pretend that the administration has reduced fraud.

[Hartmut]

Meanwhile patients are dying because they are denied life-saving treatment because it's deemed too expensive. I know a lady in Texas with endocrine cancer that until recently got her medication paid through Medicare but now got informed that would not be the case any longer. She is challenging that but Medicare has 180 days to react to that challenge (and, she guesses, another 180 after they say NO again to react to her challenging that). She has a strong suspicion that the aim is the "natural" solution, i.e. her dying before the whole thing is fought through. Another irony is that another possible treatment (available for her specific condition in other countries like e.g. Canada) is still covered by Medicare but only for male patients with prostrate cancer (approval in the US for endocrine cancer still pending).
Well, since she is also on the enemies list of the Texas GOP (for being active in voter registration etc. when still bodily able to do it), her death will be two birds with one stone for some people.

[John]

The Bush Family is well known for orchestrating mass fraud. Jeb Bush was caught in a $200,000,000 while Poppy Bush was President.

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and those are the ones you have to focus on" – GW Bush

"You have to look at the entire Bush Family in this context -- as if the family ran a corporation called ‘Frauds-R-Us,’

George Jr.’s specialty was insurance and security fraud.

Jeb’s specialty was oil and gas fraud.

Neil’s specialty was real estate fraud.

Prescott’s specialty was banking fraud.

And George Sr.’s specialty? All of the above." -- Lt. Cmdr. Al Martin, US Navy,(Ret)

"While opportunism isn’t new in U.S. politics, never did so many in one family extract so many dollars from taxpayers as when George Bush senior was president a decade ago" -- David E. Scheim, author of Contract on America.

"What you’ve got with Bush [George senior] is absolutely the largest number of siblings and children involved in what looks like a never-ending hustle." -- Republican pundit Kevin Philips

"Texas businessmen [are] not crooks, "they just have an over-developed sense of the extenuating circumstance."" -- Molly Ivins

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3308.htm

[Adam]

At least they've moved up from refund fraud.

[Carl in Carolina]

Why would the auditors be told not to compare invoices to doctors' records?

Who told them not to compare?

Are these fraudulent claims going to be repaid? (I know this two-letter answer)

And we need to start looking into the Post Office.