The crooks who are ripping off American taxpayers to the tune of $60 billion a year are being hit where it hurts the most – in their pocketbooks – as the federal government escalates its war on healthcare fraud.
At the “National Summit on Health Care Fraud” held in Washington, D.C. recently, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Attorney General Eric Holder reiterated that President Barack Obama “has zero tolerance” for healthcare fraud and abuse, which is why his budget for the upcoming fiscal year includes added funding to support anti-fraud programs.
It is a wise expenditure, considering the high returns those investments have yielded. Just a few days before the Summit, the U.S. Justice Department announced that the government recovered a record $4 billion from court prosecutions and administrative rulings in 2010. (At that rate, fighting fraud and abuse might become one of the government's biggest revenue sources to fund meaningful healthcare reform!)
This stepped-up effort is one that every hard-working American should support. Healthcare fraud effects all of us. Dishonest activities by physicians, hospitals, patients and insurers drive up costs for everyone, while also diminishing the availability of quality care.
Secretary Sebelius and Attorney General Holder told Summit participants – the first such gathering of law enforcers, and the public and private sectors – they must continue to coordinate their efforts to to catch the criminals who are ripping off Medicare, Medicaid and private companies. Key to those successful outcomes will be increased use of data-sharing technology to uncover fraudulent billing and payment practices, they said, and developing prevention programs to educate insurers, beneficiaries and physicians' staffs about how to identify fraud when they see it.
Of course, once fraud is found, someone has to report it. That's why the government should continue to allocate a percentage of the money it recovers from the bad guys, to reward the good guys – the so-called whistleblowers. In 2010 alone, whistleblowers were paid about $300 million of the billions recovered from pursuing healthcare cheats.
Workplace whistleblowers are the courageous foot soldiers in the government's war on fraud and abuse and, therefore, the most important resource. They must be well-trained, well-equipped and always confident that their trust in our leaders is well-placed.
We've said it before: We must punish the white-collar gangsters who care more about money and power than they do about life and death.
President Obama's emphasis on fighting healthcare fraud and abuse is not a political issue, and our elected legislators, at both the national and state levels, should not allow it to become such as they debate spending priorities. Expansion of HEAT, the Medicare Fraud Strike Force that has indicted more than 500 individuals and companies in seven U.S. cities, including Tampa, is absolutely essential.
This blight on our society threatens the physical and economic health of our county. We need innovation, motivation and, most of all, determination to protect ourselves from the amoral perpetrators of this disease.
To report abuse, you can contact us. Or, you can read more here about the U.S. government's efforts to combat health fraud.
Thanks for sharing our concern about this enormous problem.
