Wasted Healthcare Dollars
As the national debt exceeds $12 trillion and the monthly deficit record of $176 billion was set in October, it would behoove officials in Washington to take reports of wasteful spending more seriously. This is especially true in regard to the tens of billions of dollars that are wasted each year in federal healthcare programs.
A recent report by the government estimates that last year there was $47 billion in improper payments in Medicare, as well as more than $18 billion in improper Medicaid payments. These are the two largest components of the $98 billion in improper payments contained in the report.
With this much money at risk each year, one would think this would be the one of the biggest – if not the biggest – target for federal healthcare reform legislation. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which provides the official budget scoring of legislation, H.R. 3962, the healthcare bill that passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 220 – 215 on November 14, achieves no savings at all from attacking waste, fraud and abuse in the existing system.
A further analysis of the same legislation by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) agreed that no legislative language was included in the bill that would save any money from existing fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid programs. At the same time, federal healthcare spending will grow by an estimated $289 billion.
With the economy in such bad shape, with so many people out of work, with the existing pile of debt that has already been heaped onto our children and grandchildren, it makes no sense to refuse to address this problem first.
It makes even less sense for Congress to greatly expand Medicare and Medicaid in H.R. 3962 and increase the opportunity for more fraud and waste of taxpayers’ dollars.
But it gets worse.
For years, Congress has fudged the Medicare numbers to pay for new expansions of the program. In the old Popeye the Sailor cartoons, this was known as the Wimpy proposal – “I will gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
As I wrote earlier this year in September, this legislation does not address the problem with reimbursement rates for doctors. That is a quarter-of-a-trillion dollar problem that Congress and President Obama continue to ignore. It will just be passed on as debt to our children and grandchildren. Congress will be able to use the same budget gimmicks again to avoid paying for even more healthcare program expansions in the future.
It should not be too much to ask of our elected officials to clean up the mess that already exists before adding even more to the problem.
— Roger Morse
