The federal government estimates that it made $98 billion in improper payments last year. The audits are on pace to find $1 billion over the next three years, and the White House said more aggressive use of them could double that to $2 billion.

Did I read this correctly? We’re to be impressed that they know about $98 billion lost in a year and can find $2 billion in three years? 2/3 of a percent of the money?

Hey, if you or I misspent a hundred bucks a year, it wouldn’t take us three years to find two of those bucks.

This stuff makes my head spin.

I know there have been a lot of jokes on this but we are the one’s in the shower who have dropped the soap. The FOOs are the one’s ready and eager to have their way. This is looking really, really bad.

The federal government estimates that it made $98 billion in improper payments last year. The audits are on pace to find $1 billion over the next three years…

Wow, recover a whole 1/3 of 1 percent per year! Yay. Maybe they’re hiring the wrong auditors. What’s the cost of the program vs. what is recovered?

The federal government estimates that it made $98 billion in improper payments last year. The audits are on pace to find $1 billion over the next three years, and the White House said more aggressive use of them could double that to $2 billion.

Okay, where’d the rest of 96 billion go? These poinyoins could screw up a free lunch!

On March 10th, 2010 at 11:29 am, Popeye3 said:
UNBELIEVABLE!!! The government has been fighting Waste, Fraud, and Abuse for over 30 years, atleast. How many times can we visit that well, and why haven’t we made this fight more efficient. 98 billion in immproper payments last year is both frightening and discouraging.

Not unbelievable, it’s the government. If it’s being done right, it’s not being done by the government!

See my comment (#11) …

I think you just validated the story I passed on from one of my employees and his experience with trying to report what was considered “too small” an incident of fraud and abuse for the government to do anything about …

1. The government contracts those evil insurance companies to do Medicare.
2. The evil insurance companies had to bid to be eligible to get the work and as you probably guessed, lowest bidders win. If one company will process the millions and millions of claims for 5 cents and another for 4 cents a claim you know who wins.
3. Once an evil insurance company gets the work they must agree to follow and endless river of government regulations on timeliness and quality with countless audits and most importantly it all must be done at or under the agreed budget. Failure to meet these constantly changing requirements means you can lose your contract.
4. As for fraud investigaiton these companies are given, by the government, X amount of money to have a fraud and abuse department. Do you think it’s given a lot of money? Nope. But these companies still manage to save or get back $10 – $15 dollars for every dollar budgeted to this department by the government. But the government doesn’t take it seriously enough to really build and invest in these departments.
5. The fraud and abuse departments gather the facts, identify the fraud or abuse and once they have the information they don’t just get to go take it back. If it is significant they MUST work with the state DOJ to see if they want to pursue it. You think they want every case? Nope. They only want the big bucks and the news worthy cases that make them look good. And do you think those big buck cases all get completed? Not every time. If the DOJ doesn’t have the resources or time they dump it. If they think it’s too tough to prove it gets dropped. They leave it to the small little fraud and abuse department of the evil insurance company to get back whatever money they can. No criminal charges. No felony convictions. Just get back as much money as you can.

To the point. The government has looked the other way at healthcare fraud and abuse for a long long time and now that it is politically convenient for their agenda they want to talk tough. Bull crap!