The front page of the New York Times (8/21, A1, Duhig) reads, “Medicare’s top officials said in 2006 that they had reduced the number of fradulent and improper claims paid by the agency, keeping billions of dollars out of the hands of people trying to game the system. But according to a confidential draft of a federal inspector general’s report, those claims of success, which earned Medicare wide praise from lawmakers, were misleading.”
Administrators from Medicare “told outside auditors to ignore government policies that would have accurately measured fraud,” ending in a failure to “detect that more than one-third of spending for wheelchairs, oxygen supplies, and other medical equipment in its 2006 fiscal year was improper… That same year, Medicare officials told Congress that they had suceeded in driving down the cost of fraud in Medicare equipment to $700 million.” Because of these findings, “Congress might push for an investigation into the private company that was hired to fulfill Medicare’s auditing program.” according to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa).
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