This article repeats information that has been well known for years. It neglects to state that a hefty amount of money goes to illegals and new immigrants.
IBM offered to fix some of the gross errors in screening programs for Medicare and Medicaid for free, but was turned down twice.
Gross errors include "unscrupulous doctors billing for over 24 hours per day of procedures, phony companies invoicing for phantom services, pharmacists filling prescriptions for dead patients, home health-care companies demanding payment for treating clients actually in the hospital " http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/belt...h#ixzz1EncE23Cs
The Federal Government Makes $100 Billion a Year in Improper Welfare Payments By Veronique de Rugy February 18, 2014 6:55 PM
How much money does the federal government send to the wrong recipients? In 2012, over $100 billion. My colleague Jason Fichtner and I produced this chart, which shows the amount and rates of improper payments from federal transfer programs, using the data from the Office of Management and Budget’s “High-Error Programs Report.”
Medicare fee-for-service, Medicare Advantage, and Medicaid top the chart and combine for $61.9 billion in improper spending, which should surprise no one given their sheer size. But their relatively high rates of errors should especially worry us as the federal government is expanding its reach into the health-care market — does anyone think the Affordable Care Act will be any different from other federal health programs?
Interestingly, though Medicare fee-for-service is the biggest drain in absolute terms — wasting nearly $30 billion in 2012 — it’s far from the worst offender on a dollar-for-dollar basis. The Earned Income Tax Credit is responsible for $12.6 billion in improper payments, almost a quarter of what the program spent in 2012. Pell Grants have the lowest amount of improper payments as a share of program spending, at just 2.5 percent, but the program still manages to waste $800 million a year. .....................................................