Prof. Floyd
ENG 101-C10
Medicaid Fraud in America
The U.S. spends more than $2 trillion on healthcare annually. At least three percent of that spending — or $68 billion — is lost to fraud each year. Fraud accounts for 19 percent of the $600 billion to $800 billion in wasteful spending in the U.S. healthcare system annually. According to the Coalition against Insurance Frauds national website, Fraud amounts to between $125 billion and $175 billion annually, including everything from fake Medicare claims to payouts for worthless treatments and other services. No wonder our nation is in an economic breakdown in the health insurance market. The solution to Medicaid Fraud may be as simple as spending more money on investigations and less time approving those who are just too lazy to work.
This has been a problem since Medicaid started in 1965, someone out there has always been trying to figure a way to beat the system and get free health insurance while others who work every day can’t afford to purchase their own insurance. The average health insurer's anti-fraud investigative unit has an annual budget of slightly more than $1.9 million and 19 fulltime employees. This is clearly not enough to be able to keep our Medicaid problem clean and free from people getting around the system. Let’s hire some more investigators and increase the technology that is needed to insure that our Medicaid system funds are being used the right way instead of being wasted by those who don’t need to be on it.
I will answers the important questions like, how to spot Medicaid fraud and how can I report possible Medicaid fraud once it has been spotted. I will dig into research topics like why our local state and county police departments don’t get involved in Medicaid fraud reports. We will review the cost of Medicaid to the average American and who really is benefiting from our hard earned money that is getting spent in the health care system.
Some argue that our current