The amount of Medicare/Medicaid fraud in the United States is staggering. Politicians like to talk about “reducing waste” and making government programs “more efficient.” They never say how they’re going to do it, but it can’t be done. Order cannot come from chaos, and these vast bureaucracies are just too big to manage efficiently.
Citizen journalist James O’Keefe is at it again. He’s doing the job that the leftist-sympathizing press is unwilling to do. The video below is hilarious and also another fine example of how entitlements are ripe for fraud.
My Dad has owned a leather furniture repair company for almost twenty years. It’s with this in mind that I have always had a keen eye on “leather repair kits.” In short, these kits are a scam. They don’t work, the colors don’t match, and their claims are fraudulent.
I wouldn’t even waste my breath on these kits but they’re everywhere. A quick Google search on “leather repair” spawns hundreds of kits. A trained leather repair professional has to match color by eye. It’s a very difficult process because almost no two couches have the same color.
There are plenty of things to be thankful for this year. One of my favorites is the climategate scandal. I’ve been writing about this topic for years. The theory of climate change is a religion to some people. How else can one justify the behavior of these scientists? Make no mistake; this scandal damages the theory. Michael Mann isn’t some fringe scientist (not be confused with the brilliant movie director who can make even 18th Century America seem like Miami in 1984). This particular Michael Mann invented the infamous hockey stick graph that turned out to be garbage. However, the initial findings were huge news, but once it was proven to be a fraud the press ignored it. The New York Times, which is partly wrapped up in this mess, wants to ignore it. How about a congressional investigation? The American taxpayer is giving money to these clowns. The press may want to ignore this but the truth is out. There is no alarming warming. There’s no alarming climate change.
Shockingly Medicare is considered by some a successful entitlement program. I know it’s mind boggling. The program is headed towards financial insolvency and there are people out there asking for it to be expanded. It doesn’t make sense. You know what else doesn’t make sense? Senator Tom Harkin is the answer to that question.
Senator Harkin spent August 16 meeting some fellow socialists at the Health Care for America Now (HCAN). Perhaps a better name for HCAN would be Chapter 11 Now (C11N). Not daunted by the current fiscal problems facing that nation Harkin had some ideas on how to bankrupt the country even quicker.
Senator Harkin, who supports the establishment of a comprehensive national health care plan, mentioned two possible means of achieving this:
1. Give all Americans the option to enroll in the Federal Employee Benefit Pool (the same insurance he has), with the rationale that enrolling more would lower the cost to individual members; or
2. Expand Medicare to cover all Americans. It would be much more difficult to get Congress to pass the second, he noted.
I’m sure it was a happy event. Senator Harkin signed the symbolic HCAN’s Which Side Are You On? pledge (he even got his picture taken). Evidently Harkin is on the side of bankrupting the nation. HCAN is like countless groups in the United State. They are full of good initiations but they completely ignore the fact that government intervention into health care is making things worse.
Let’s just look at the waste of Medicare. The New York Times had an article on Friday that shed some light on Medicare fraud.
In one example, the inspector general’s investigation found that Medicare — working only off of a supplier’s paperwork — had bought a power wheelchair for a beneficiary who neither needed nor used the device. The beneficiary did not know the ordering physician or the supplier, and the supposed ordering physician denied placing the order or knowing either the patient or the supply company.
The inspector general’s report pegged the rate of improper payments for medical equipment at 31.5 percent, an astonishingly high proportion that implies improper spending of some $2.8 billion, four times what Medicare had claimed.
31.5 percent of medical equipment claims are fraud! That’s not a typo. I wouldn’t be surprised if at least 20 percent of the entire budget is fraud. The Medicare and Medicaid programs cost the United States $627 billion in 2007 and the cost of the program is expected to double in the next decade. A 20 percent fraud rate would add up to nearly $125 billion dollars a year (that’s a low estimate). How much is $125 billion? It’s enough to cover costs in Iraq for a year and it’s more than the GDP of Ecuador, Bulgaria, Lithuanian, and Croatia.
Sure, let’s expand this program! It’s unbelievable to me that people keep coming up with new programs when we can’t afford the ones we already have. Good intentions are not an excuse for stupidity.
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