Medicaid Equals 10% Fraud or $48 Billion Last Year: What Do You Think Obamacare Will Total?

A new report coming from the Government Accountability Office shows there was $48 billion in fraud committed last year in the Medicaid program. That totals 10% of the Medicaid budget, and it probably doesn't cover the tax payer expense for investigations, prosecutions, etc.

Politico Reports:

CMS estimates that $48 billion of estimated Medicare outlays of $509 billion in fiscal 2010 went to improper payments, including fraudulent ones. “However, this improper payment estimate did not include all of the program’s risk since it did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount,” said Kathleen King, director of GAO’s health care team.

Officials said it’s also much harder to identify how much of the improper payments were caused by fraud, which left some GOP lawmakers at the hearing frustrated.

“If you can’t identify it, you can’t penetrate it down,” subcommittee Chairman Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) said. He said it is “incomprehensible” that CMS can’t estimate the level of fraud in the program.


Now, even as late as last week, as Barack Obama praised Mitt for Brains Romney for his healthcare debacle in Massachusetts, Obama was talking about how spending $1 trillion of your dollars is going to total savings for the federal government. This is one of those promises federal government likes to make when they spend your money, and rarely the results prove their promises--not the space shuttle program. With so much fraud taking place within these government socialized medicine programs, do you really believe Obamacare will be different? Do you really believe it will save money?

Of course not. As hospitals are forced to play by the government rules, and the federal government puts more regulations on doctors that affect their overhead, there will be many that find holes in the system at the cost of the US taxpayer. Government should stay out of healthcare, and that would truly lower the national debt.