The government can't police fraud

Medicare loses your shirt paying for things ordered by dead doctors

The Senate Homeland Security investigations subcommittee looked for fraud in the Medicare program and found, once again, a treasure trove of it.

The Associated Press reports that the subcommittee ordered a review of millions of reimbursement claims for medical equipment and supplies between 2002 and 2007.

The review showed that Medicare paid suppliers between $60.3 million and $92.8 million on the basis of prescriptions supposedly written by doctors who had been dead for at least a year.

In Florida alone, Medicare paid more than $2 million for medical whatnot to companies that claimed to have prescriptions from 114 doctors who had already gone into the great beyond.

More than 480 claims worth more than half a million dollars were paid on the basis of the identification code of a physician who had died in 1999.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did not challenge the report, which included the breezy admission that about 16 percent of the questioned claims involved prescribing physicians who had been dead for at least 10 years before the service date on the claim.

The center did say it was working to strengthen regulations of the documentation Medicare providers must keep, and would work with the Social Security Administration to get monthly updates on who dies.

Maybe this time the government will get it right.

After all, a 2001 report found that Medicare had improperly paid about $91 million on claims filed with invalid or inactive doctors' identification codes.

http://www.dailymail.com/Opinion/Editorials/200807140116