Healthcare fraud: A $98B industry — 10 things to know

The United States healthcare industry is losing billions of dollars from healthcare fraud.

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Here are 10 things to know:

1. Medicaid spends $415 billion annually.

2. Medicare spends approximately $600 billion each year.

3. Total health spending in the United States amounts to a staggering $2.7 trillion.

4. Donald Berwick, MD, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Andrew Hackbarth of RAND, estimated fraud added $98 billion to annual Medicare and Medicaid spending.

5. Fraud also accounted for an additional $272 billion in spending across the entire health system.

6. Officials in LA discovered a physician who collected $23 million for 1,000 power wheelchairs and equipments his patients didn’t need.

7. The United States Justice Departments have charged 243 people totaling $712 million in false billings to Medicare and Medicaid after conducting an eight year long campaign.

8. Healthcare fraud is not localized in one area, but is a national problem occurring in major cities across the United States.

9. A Miami healthcare official carried out a $205 million scam. He was later sentenced to 50 years in jail.

10. The federal government implemented a “strike force” that charged 2,300 people for scams worth $7 billion.

 

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