One of the reoccurring themes when I talk to my fellow citizens on the right of the political spectrum is freeloaders. They seem utterly outraged and maybe terrified that someone might be getting something with their tax money. I keep hearing stories about the welfare mama driving a Cadillac. Another favorite story is the teenage bimbo driving a hot car, living with her boyfriend, and paying for cigarettes with food stamps. Then we have malingers collecting workers comp for a fake injury. The stories go on and on.
I have no doubt that there are cases like the above. I spent an afternoon a while back Googling for statistics on this type of fraud or abuse of the system. I did not have a lot of luck finding any numbers. My gut feeling is that the dollars pale in comparison to the real welfare cheats, doctors, lawyers, hospitals, and corporations.
A while back I worked for a large corporation involved in the care of the elderly. Their standard business practice was to bill Medicare for every possible thing. Apparently they were a little too zealous about it. The government pushed back at them and they had to pay back a rather large sum of money (in the millions). If memory serves there was also a fine involved, but I am not entirely sure on that part.
A news story just broke, 91 charged in Medicare fraud crackdown. They have just arrested 91 individuals, including doctors and other medical professionals. They are claiming $295 million in false billings. What is particularly egregious about several of these cases is that these “medical professionals” were preying on the sick and weak and forcing them to participate. In one instance it was join the scheme or be evicted. If you are down and out, trying to get your life back together, the last thing you want is to be back out on the street.
From an article in USA Today:
“In 2010, the government recovered a record $4 billion from health fraud cases after the federal health care law created one agency and expanded another. The actuary for Medicare predicted provisions of the law would ultimately net $4.9 billion in fraud and abuse savings over the next 10 years, which will be rolled back into Medicare.”
“We have dozens and dozens of cases to go,” said Gillies, referring to a fraud that the FBI has estimated to cost U.S. taxpayers anywhere between $70 billion and $234 billion a year.
It is another false savings to not fund the agencies charged with policing the system. The unfortunate truth is that not all folks are ethical. Given that we need to have programs in place to identify and punish those willing to game the system. Medicare and other programs of that ilk are needed and valuable. The corporate/professional cheats steal from all of us. Given the numbers above we are only identifying a small amount of the cheating going on. Fund the policing agency and save us all money. We do not need to cut these programs. We just need to keep business from defrauding all of us.
I would just like to see all the welfare mamas out there cheat anywhere near the estimate $234 billion from these type of fraud cases. It is time to point the finger where it really needs to be pointed, at the business cheats rather than the few recipients of services that may be scamming the system.