Medicare now required check for fraud before paying claims

The Miami Herald: "The behemoth Medicare bureaucracy will have to act more like a credit card company in flagging suspicious bills under a new federal law that could save taxpayers billions of dollars a year in wasteful government healthcare spending. The anti-fraud provision, tucked into the Small Business Lending Act that became law Monday, would force Medicare to end its 45-year-old policy of paying claims quickly without verifying them" (Weaver, 9/30).

Meanwhile, chronic fraud in the Medicare program continues, such as one court case now unfolding in Michigan.

The Detroit Free Press: "A Detroit-area man faces 10 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday to running a health care fraud scheme that involved billing the government for home health visits that were unnecessary or never happened" (Baldas, 9/28).

The Detroit News: Hassan Akhtar, 26, entered his plea to one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and faces a maximum $250,000 fine when sentenced Jan. 27. Akhtar admitted to federal investigators he and co-conspirators at Oak Park-based All American Home Care Inc. billed Medicare for home health-care visits that were medically unnecessary and/or never provided, according to the U.S. Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services" (Snell, 9/28).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.