IG Report: HHS Spent $120 Million on Medicare for Illegal Immigrants
And Obamacare may make it even easier to commit fraud.
News
| Bradford Thomas |
A new report by the Inspector General revealed that between the fiscal years 2009-2011, the Department of Health and Human Services spent $120.6 million under Medicare Parts B and D to cover illegal immigrants.
Under the category “unlawfully present beneficiaries,” the IG report states:
“We identified $91.6 million in improper payments to unlawfully present beneficiaries in Part B during CYs 2009 through 2011. When CMS received untimely information indicating that unlawful presence overlapped with the dates of service on previously paid Medicare claims, CMS did not notify Medicare's contractors of this updated information, and the contractors did not detect and recoup improper payments. For the same period, we estimated $29 million in gross drug costs associated with unlawfully present beneficiaries in Part D.
As CNS News reports, during that same period, HHS spent $33.6 million on incarcerated individuals (whose medical care is paid for by prisons) and in 2011 spent $23 million on deceased beneficiaries. And, though the IG's department says it has "ramped up" its oversight with the rollout of the ACA, it admits the Obamacare online exchanges might make Medicare fraud even easier:
“Though Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology may make it easier to commit fraud, CMS and its contractors have not adjusted their practices for identifying and investigating fraud in EHRs. Few contractors reviewed EHRs differently from paper medical records. In addition, not all contractors reported being able to identify copied language or overdocumentation in a medical record.
http://www.truthrevolt.org/news/ig-report-hhs-spent-120-million-medicare-illegal-immigrants
