Medicare and Medicaid are two government programs that are used to ceaseless attempts to con them out of money for dubious or outright fraudulent medical care. But a new report has pegged the damage from these attempts, from hospice care expenses alone, at over a quarter of a billion dollars per year. One of the most popular, and expensive, scams involves patients being cared for inpatient when they could have been treated at home for as low as a quarter of the cost billed to the government otherwise. More troubling, %1 of patients were revealed to have no terminal illness at all while up to %20 of patients are being given inpatient status despite no clear need. In addition, unscrupulous hospice providers have double charged for medicine especially when the patient has supplemental Medicare Part D coverage. Due to the highly sensitive nature of end of life care the potential for funny business is rife so let us hope the government will be able to clamp down on abuses like these so the money can be directed to those most in need.
See, Report: Medicare often overbilled by hospices and pays twice for some drugs, The Tampa Bay Times, April 2, 2016.
Special thanks to Brian Cohan (Attorney at Law, Law Offices of Brian J. Cohan, P.C.) for bringing this article to my attention.
