HHS Secretary Leavitt Asks Congress for More Funding To Fight Medicare Fraud
HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt on Tuesday told the House Budget Committee that the Bush administration seeks $1.3 billion for fiscal year 2008 for a program jointly operated by the department and the Department of Justice to coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement efforts to reduce fraud in Medicare, but some lawmakers raised concerns about the request, CQ HealthBeat reports. Mandatory spending for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program will increase by about $20 million for FY 2008, but Leavitt said that the administration seeks an additional $183 million in discretionary spending to expand efforts to address fraud in the Medicare prescription drug benefit and Medicare Advantage programs and to improve oversight of Medicaid.In addition, he said that the administration seeks to revise current law to allow some of the funds recovered in fraud investigations to be used in efforts to address fraud. Under current law, all funds recovered in fraud investigations are returned to the Medicare trust fund.
Leavitt told the committee about his trip last December to South Florida, where he accompanied agents with the HHS Office of Inspector General to several storefronts of fraudulent providers of durable medical equipment. According to Leavitt, the providers used stolen Medicare identification numbers or the identification numbers of beneficiaries, in some cases without their knowledge, to bill the program fraudulently for hundreds of thousands of dollars. Leavitt said. "There are pockets of (fraud) all over the country. We need to get to them."
Concerns
Committee member Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) said, "One group you've left completely off the hook" in efforts to address fraud is the private companies that process Medicare claims. A requirement that such companies increase efforts to detect fraud and inform HHS officials when fraud occurs could save Medicare billions of dollars, Cooper said, adding, "Today you're talking about small fish, minnows."
Leavitt responded that detection of small amounts of fraud "adds up to billions of dollars" (Carey, CQ HealthBeat, 7/17).
