{"id":1800,"date":"2013-07-02T15:44:09","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T21:44:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/?p=1800"},"modified":"2013-07-02T15:44:09","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T21:44:09","slug":"federal-budget-cuts-are-undermining-efforts-to-crack-down-on-medicare-and-medicaid-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/federal-budget-cuts-are-undermining-efforts-to-crack-down-on-medicare-and-medicaid-fraud\/","title":{"rendered":"Federal Budget Cuts Are Undermining Efforts To Crack Down On Medicare And Medicaid Fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Sy Mukherjee, ThinkProgress
\nclick here for original article<\/a><\/p>\n

A combination of federal budget cuts have left Medicare and Medicaid anti-fraud operations understaffed and unprepared to keep pace with rampant abuse in America\u2019s health entitlement programs, according to officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The disparity is likely to be exacerbated in the face of further cuts as millions of poor Americans gain health coverage for the first time through Obamcare\u2019s Medicaid expansion in 2014.<\/p>\n

The Center for Public Integrity (CPI)\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0that several of HHS\u2019s Deputy Inspectors General testified to a congressional panel in June that their investigative departments are set to lose over 400 staffers \u2014 over 20 percent of its anti-fraud workforce \u2014 in the coming year.<\/p>\n

That amounts to hundreds of potential fraud cases that can\u2019t be investigated by HHS, which in turn harms consumers and wastes government money. \u201cWe\u2019re operating with a reduced budget in the face of the growing program,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0one HHS Deputy Inspector General, Gary Cantrell, during his congressional testimony. \u201cAnd just last year alone, our office closed down 1,200 complaints due to lack of resources. Those are complaints that came through the door that we didn\u2019t have the resources to investigate further to determine whether it was a viable criminal case or not.\u201d<\/p>\n

The most common types of public insurance fraud\u00a0target poor and elderly Americans<\/a>\u00a0on government assistance. Providers can bilk these unsuspecting victims by \u201cupcoding\u201d the cost of their services, self-referring patients for unnecessary procedures, and even stealing their beneficiaries\u2019 identification numbers to profit off of their government-funded benefits.<\/p>\n

Entitlement fraud crackdowns were\u00a0bolstered by funding<\/a>\u00a0in the 2009 stimulus bill, as well as Obamacare provisions that allow HHS and the Justice Department to analyze medical claims data that indicate fraudulent practices and focus efforts on regions with a history of abuse. Those practices have proven extremely successful overall \u2014 recently-released government figures show that the Justice Department\u00a0recovered almost $15 billion in Medicare fraud money<\/a>\u00a0over the last four years, likely contributing to the program\u2019s\u00a0improving solvency<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But according to CPI, the financial resources for these efforts are dwindling with the expiration of several old programs. The timing could prove problematic, since millions of Americans will be put on Medicaid for the first time in 2014 thanks to the health care reform law. And since there is still\u00a0widespread confusion<\/a>\u00a0over Obamacare\u2019s enrollment provisions, poor Americans are alluring targets for shoddy insurance scams. In fact, there have already been\u00a0reports<\/a>\u00a0of Obamacare \u201cinsurance card\u201d schemes cropping up in advance of the health care law\u2019s full implementation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Sy Mukherjee, ThinkProgress click here for original article A combination of federal budget cuts have left Medicare and Medicaid anti-fraud operations understaffed and unprepared to keep pace with rampant abuse in America\u2019s health entitlement programs, according to officials with the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The disparity is likely to be exacerbated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1801,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1800","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/images-6.jpeg?fit=160%2C240&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1802,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1800\/revisions\/1802"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peaceeconomyproject.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}