MIAMI (Reuters) – It’s a crime so profitable that even dead people are in on the act.
A US Senate committee revealed last year that public health insurer Medicare had paid as much as $92 million from 2000 to 2007 for medical services or equipment ordered or prescribed by doctors who were dead at the time.
Many had died more than five years before the date when they supposedly ordered or authorized the service.
Healthcare fraud said to cost US taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars a year has garnered increased attention amid the congressional debate about overhauling the US healthcare system — especially since President Barack Obama wants to cover some of the cost of reforms by fighting abuse.
Yet interviews with several law enforcement and healthcare experts indicate the president may be disappointed.
Some fear the focus on fraud may come as too little, too late after years of government complacency and inaction.
Experts like the FBI’s John Gillies say the problem has been getting worse all the time, as mob figures and violent criminals are lured by fabulously easy money and relatively light prison sentences into fraud targeting Medicare, the federal health insurer for more than 43 million elderly and disabled Americans.
“There are so many schemes involved. Take any aspect of the healthcare industry and there’s a fraud going on in there right now,” Gillies, special agent in charge of the FBI Miami Division, told Reuters in a recent interview.
Florida has long been known for its unsavory association with cocaine cartels, political shenanigans and swampland real estate deals.
Gillies says the state is also now “ground zero for healthcare fraud” since so many elderly Americans have retired to end their days in its famous sunshine.
Hardly a week goes by without authorities in Florida reporting another arrest, indictment or conviction for Medicare fraud, which has replaced the drug trade as the crime of choice among many criminals.
