There are many different kinds of Medicare fraud yet the goal is always the same – to rook money from the Medicare program. Generally Medicare fraud is challenging to track as not all fraud is detected and not all suspicious claims prove to be fraudulent. That is when Medicare abuse is in place. It occurs when physicians or suppliers fail to follow best medical practices, resulting in unnecessary costs to Medicare such as improper payments, or medically irrelevant services. In fact, Medicare fraud – estimated now to total about $60 billion a year – has become one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America.
Significant decrease of fraud will cut costs for families, businesses and the federal government. Instead it will increase the quality of services for those in need of care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and U.S. Department of Justice are proactively cooperating to help eliminate fraud and investigate fraudulent Medicare (and Medicaid) operators who are cheating the system. On January 24, 2011, HHS announced new rules authorized under the Affordable Care Act that will help prevent defrauding the Medicare program. These rules serve to protect patients and legitimate doctors as well as other providers. They include: enhanced screening and other enrollment requirements (rigorous screening process for providers enrolling Medicare in order to keep fraudulent providers out of the program), stopping payment of suspect claims (the program can temporarily stop enrollment of a category of providers or of providers within a geographic area that has been identified as high risk), new resources and sharing data to fight fraud, new tools to prevent fraud, expanded overpayment recovery efforts, enhanced penalties to deter fraud and abuse, stiff new rules and sentences for criminals, greater oversight of private insurance abuses.
