Medicare, Medicaid “Fraudulent Payments” Total More Than Homeland Security, State Department Budgets
Wow:
(CNSNews.com) – The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the federal health-care agency that is a key bureaucracy in implementing Obamacare—made at least $70.5 billion in “improper payments” last year.
These improper federal health-care payments amounted to more than the combined total of $68.3 billion spent by the entire Homeland Security and the State departments last year, which spent $44.5 billion and $23.8 billion respectively according to the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Medicare made at least $48 billion in improper payments in fiscal 2010 and Medicaid made $22.5 billion, according to written testimony on “Medicare and Medicaid Fraud, Waste and Abuse” presented to the Senate Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management by Kathleen King, director of health care for the Government Accountability Office.
And if that alone weren’t enough to depress you, the figures above didn’t include dollar amounts for improper payments in the Medicare prescription drug entitlement program:
The full amount of improper payments made by Medicare may be higher than $48 billion because the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services has not yet estimated the dollar amount of improper payments made by Medicare Part D, the prescription drug-benefit program.
The total amount of improper payments is 8.95% of the total Medicare/Medicaid budgets.
“Too big to fail” has been the refrain of the bailout era. But these entitlement programs are too big to do anything but fail.
Tags: big government, entitlements, medicaid, medicare
