94 Charged in Medicare Scams Totaling $251M

This article should send up red flags for anyone who reads it, as to why we do not want the Federal Government involved in our health care. Medicare is a government run insurance which is Un-Constitutional to begin with. But this article should tell the reader just how incompetent our federal employees are.


Now because the Feds need to fund the new health care, there going to stop the raping that has been going on for ages? It isn't that they didn't know about it, it's that they didn't care, because at the time, it served it's purpose. Congress could have stopped this long ago if they had really cared. Instead, they now claim Obama's Affordable Care Act is the Political Hero.

Feds launch largest Medicare fraud bust, charging 94 in 5 states for $251 million scams
By KELLI KENNEDY and TOM HAYS Associated Press 


Elderly Russian immigrants lined up to take kickbacks from the backroom of a Brooklyn clinic. Claims flooded in from Miami for HIV treatments that never occurred. One professional patient was named in nearly 4,000 false Medicare claims.

Authorities said busts carried out this week in Miami, New York City, Detroit, Houston and Baton Rouge, La., were the largest Medicare fraud takedown in history — part of a massive overhaul in the way federal officials are preventing and prosecuting the crimes.

In all, 94 people — including several doctors and nurses — were charged Friday in scams totaling $251 million. Federal authorities, while touting the operation, cautioned the cases represent only a fraction of the estimated $60 billion to $90 billion in Medicare fraud absorbed by taxpayers each year.

For the first time federal officials have the power to overhaul the system under Obama's Affordable Care Act, which gives them authority to stop paying a provider they suspect is fraudulent. Critics have complained the current process did nothing more than rubber-stamp payments to fraudulent providers.

Violent criminals and mobsters are also tapping into the scams, seeing Medicare fraud as more lucrative than dealing drugs and having less severe criminal penalties, officials said.

For decades, Medicare operated under a system that paid providers first and investigated later. That pay and chase method was a boon for crooks, giving them 90 days lag time to milk the system and flee with millions before authorities were aware a crime had been committed. FULL STORY