US Medical Fraud

Officials estimate that such fraud costs the Medicare system funded by taxpayers $60 billion per year – and they say officials should devote as many resources to sniffing out fraud as it does to  investigating overbilling and unconventional medical treatments.

Medicare also automatically pays most of the bills it receives from companies that have federally issued supplier numbers without even a cursory check of what the company is billing for. In another Florida case earlier this month, FBI agents arrested three men for allegedly running sham HIV clinics that had billed the government  more than $100 million.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversee federally funded health programs, said they have instituted new measures to combat fraud, including working more closely with investigators, removing the mandatory billing numbers of nearly 900 companies and preventing convicted felons in areas of high fraud from receiving a Medicare number.
In the Miami area, the U.S. Justice Department created a strike force over the past year that opened almost 900 criminal investigations and convicted 560 defendants of healthcare fraud, according to the Post. The strike force is expanding into Los Angeles and Houston.