May 16, 2005
Medical insurgency
The FBI seems to have confused Medicare fraud with terrorism:
Money earmarked for health care fraud investigations may be going to the fight against terrorism and other uses, congressional investigators said in a report Monday on the FBI.
The FBI says that it has put all the money, $114 million a year, into investigations of fraud in the Medicare, Medicaid and other government health care programs. But the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s investigative agency, said that assertion can’t be verified because the “FBI did not have a system in place to capture its overall health care fraud investigation costs.”
…The report said the FBI needs better controls on how it is using the money, which is transferred each year from the Medicare trust fund. Improper Medicare payments total nearly $20 billion a year, a number that is expected to rise when Medicare’s prescription drug insurance program begins next year.
…The [9/11] terror attacks “demanded an instant 100 percent commitment from the FBI towards counterterrorism,” FBI chief financial officer Joseph L. Ford said in a response that was incorporated in the GAO report.
Fair point. But it would be reassuring if the feds actually knew that had happened. More here.
Posted by Stephen at 4:44 PM in Terrorism | Permalink | TrackBack (0)
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