Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Seniors Help Consumers To Battle Medicare Fraud
NJ.com: Bamboozled: The Medicare Fraud Army You've Never Heard Of
So how would you like to have your very own Medicare advocate? An expert who can scrutinize your bills line by line, who is trained to spot mistakes and pick up on fraud? You've got one: The Senior Medicare Patrol, or SMP. SMP, according to the feds, has recovered more than $106 million in savings to Medicare, Medicaid and individual beneficiaries since 1997. The numbers for 2015 are expected to be $2.5 million, a recent federal report said. Every state has an SMP program -- they're all federally funded. (Price Mueller, 6/9)
Kaiser Health News: Medicare’s Efforts To Curb Backlog Of Appeals Not Sufficient, GAO Reports
Despite interventions by Medicare officials, the number of appeals from health care providers and patients challenging denied claims continues to spiral, increasing the backlog of cases and delaying many decisions well beyond the timeframes set by law, according to a government study released Thursday. The report from the Government Accountability Office, said the backlog "shows no signs of abating." It called for the Department of Health and Human Services to improve its oversight of the process and to streamline appeals so that prior decisions are taken into account and repetitive claims are handled more efficiently. (Jaffe, 6/10)
