Health Care Reform

Obama and the Democratic-controlled congress have good intentions, but it seems that this administration is no different from the past administration.  In the worst economic crisis in decades, the people in charge of running our country are penny-wise and dollar-dumb.  Despite all the current changes to medicare and the ongoing debate over more cuts to medicare in the proposed health care issue, they are overlooking one critical fact: $30 billion dollars or more of medicare money is lost each year to fraud.  I don’t understand why they are not addressing this issue.  Have we elected leaders that have no concept of the value of our money?   Congress has managed to address all sorts of issues in the 1,000+ pages of the health reform bill; why have they not addressed the issue of fraud to the system? 

We know the excuses:  There’s the time constraint and the lack of people available to trace the fraud. In fact, past-President Clinton recognized the impact fraud had on our national budget and tried to get the then Republican-controlled congress to address this issue.  And yet, over a decade later, nothing has been done.  It insults my American blood to know that con-men are probably laughing at the ignorace of my country all the way to the bank.  Not only does this show the world that our government is wasteful and financially uncaring, but I wonder just how much of this fraudulent money is used to help fund terrorism around the world.  

We need to stop this fiscal leaking before we address spending more money.  Can’t someone come up with a solution?  Wait a minute, I have a solution! The National unemployment rate is over 10% and the the President recently held a summit on creating jobs in America with the focus on not spending more taxpayer money to do it.  Why not hire some of those unemployed people to investigate the medicare fraud.  One very simple solution would be to set up call centers where newly-hired medicare employees could call and verify that medicare recipients actually received the services that were billed to them. If the service was valid, those bills would be paid.  If the services were not valid, then they would not get paid.  This would be a self-funded program; money saved would cover the cost of the centers and the hiring of new workers.  Wahla! no new expense to taxpayers and the respect of this administration and congress would increase a notch or two. In fact, maybe we should look at other areas where there is a huge waste of taxpayer’s money and see how we can put people back to work by recovering these funds. 

I am not opposed to paying more taxes if that is what is needed to make this country healthy, but I am opposed to sitting back and watching my tax dollars be stolen.  Our administration needs to lead by example and show us the meaning of fiscal responsibility.