Government moves to staunch massive Medicare fraud - Yahoo! News

Description

Since 2006, U.S. taxpayers have paid nearly $155,000 to send home health nurses to inject twice-daily insulin shots for an elderly, diabetic Miami man.

But in fact, the man was not diabetic or homebound and the nurses never existed, according to a federal indictment. Now the owners of two Miami companies that purportedly cared for the man are charged with running a $22 million fraud scheme at the expense of Medicare, the federal health program for the elderly and disabled.

Medicare billing records showed the man, identified in court documents as M.G., had rarely ordered any insulin or syringes. When his care switched from one home care company to another, he had no injections for 30 days -- "miraculously cured of his alleged insulin-dependence for a month," U.S. prosecutors joked in court papers.

As the Obama administration pursues an overhaul of the U.S. health care system and proposes expanding government's role, it also has expanded efforts to root out the fraud that is bleeding tens of billions of dollars a year from Medicare.

The gigantic federal program provides health care for 45 million people who are over 65, blind or disabled and has a proposed budget of $453 billion next year.

In June, the Justice Department and Department of Health and Human Services created Medicare anti-fraud strike forces in Detroit and Houston. Like one set up in Los Angeles last year, they are modeled after one born in Miami, the nation's Medicare fraud capital.

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090701/ts_nm/us_usa_medicare_fraud

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090701/ts_nm/us_usa_medicare_fraud