Rampant Medicaid Fraud

Steven Malanga reports:

May 1, 2006 -- FOR more than a decade, Medicaid has been the fastest-growing item on many state budgets, but efforts to uncover and stamp out the astonishing amount of fraud in the program (whose costs the states split with Washington) have lagged. Experts estimate that abuses of Medicaid eat up at least 10 percent of the program's total cost nationwide - a waste of $30 billion a year.

In New York state has the country's largest Medicaid program, but spending on enforcement has been shrinking over the years. Experts estimate the loss to waste and fraud could be even more extreme here - amounting to more than $5 billion a year. The cheating is widespread and brazen, as scam artists have figured out that years of lax oversight have made Medicaid easy plunder.

Unscrupulous doctors bill for more than 24 hours of procedures "performed" in a single day. Phony companies invoice for phantom services. Pharmacists fill prescriptions for dead patients. On and on the rip-offs go.

Eat your heart out Enron.