THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602170018
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Editorial
LENGTH: Short : 44 lines
``Physicians go so far as to joke of the government's ineptness to investigate and prosecute the fraud'' in Medicare, a witness told the Senate Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee the other day. ``I have witnessed this fraud from inside the medical industry: in major hospitals, in medical device seminars and in operating rooms around the country.''
The whistle-blowing witness was not identified. He testified out of public view - behind a screen - and his voice was electronically altered. He described himself to the subcommittee as an expert in cardiac-care devices who watched for 10 years as hospitals and physicians defrauded the Medicare and Medicaid billing systems.
Just about everything out of Washington carrying Uncle Sam's label seems to anger Americans today - in some cases unfairly. Yet our guess is that doctors and hospitals criminally pocketing between $17 billion and $25 billion a year (Medicare's estimated fraud range of 10 percent to 15 percent) from taxpayers would enrage most people beyond anything else.
This should. The practice is cynical, arrogant, despicable. These crimes are being committed by individuals and institutions in a field where integrity ought to be sacred but greed reigns.
Sen. William V. Roth of Delaware, subcommittee chairman, says government agencies were ``asleep at the switch.'' But they have finally begun the process of collecting the evidence. John Hartwig, deputy inspector general, told the subcommittee Wednesday that the government has issued more than 130 subpoenas to hospitals in 30 states.
Sure, it's a false hope that eliminating thievery would solve Medicare's funding problems. And sure, from a sound-management standpoint, there are practical limits to how much Medicare ought to invest in trying.
But when doctors joke about how easy the illegal pickings are and when hospitals contrive to conceal what they know to be wrong, our guess is that most Americans would say that exposing the villains of Medigate is worth stretching those limits. Go get 'em. by CNB