251 million dollars vanished in Medicare fraud
The Federal authorities are conducting an investigation on the largest Medicare fraud in five different states and have already arrested ninety-four suspects accused of scams totaling 251 million dollars.Among the suspects arrested in the five states are several doctors and nurses, and they are accused of billing Medicare for equipment that was not necessary and expensive treatments for HIV and physical problems that the patients did not ever received. Most of the suspects come from the Miami area, and they are accused of stealing a total of about 140 million dollars. President Barack Obama’s health care plan can be paid from the Medicare frauds clean up, which is estimated to a sum ranging from 60 billion to 90 billion dollars for every year.
The most common scams to fraud Medicare are billing them several times for the same medical equipment (for example a wheelchair that is in fact never given away to a patient ). The investigators say that this particular fraud includes a wide network of doctors, clinic owners, patients and patient recruiters that collaborated to the 251 million dollars loss. Along with the doctors and the medical staff there were a few violent criminals involved who saw the opportunity of getting some easy money. A few years ago, due to the registration system, it took 90 days before the government detected a scam, but now the authorities get billing data the moment it is submitted, so they can catch suspects in real time.11
