Healthcare Fraud – Great Contributor To Rising Healthcare Costs
Tuesday, December 27th, 2011The healthcare industry is sadly not immune to fraudulent behavior. There are various schemes involved, all with the same goal, to take money from individuals, insurance companies, and social welfare programs illegitimately. The following are the most common schemes used to siphon off money from the healthcare services.
Medical equipment fraud
Formally known as DME or Durable Medical Equipment fraud. One of the schemes typical in this type of fraud is when equipment manufacturers offer “free” non-medical products, like toasters, to individuals, but then charge insurers for actual DME items that were never issued. There are also phantom schemes that involves false charges for equipment that was never delivered. Such schemes often require the involvement of health care officials for their execution. There are numerous cases where doctors hand out blank prescriptions to DME companies to misuse as they please.
Pharmaceutical Fraud
Pharmaceutical fraud is even more dangerous. It involves the manufacturing and/or marketing of substandard medicine or medicine that do not meet regulatory guidelines. Fake prescription and billing issues are also included under pharmaceutical fraud.
Medicare fraud
This fraudulent activity can take the form of any of the above mentioned healthcare frauds. The most common of these are false billing and charging for services not rendered. Upcoding and unbundling are also common ways on how this type of fraud is carried out. Upbundling is when a bundled test is split over multiple bills. Upcoding on the other hand is where bills are inflated using billing codes that indicate the patient experienced medical complications or needed more expensive treatments.
All of these schemes exploit the lack of checking mechanisms in the Medicare system. And thus, it is a ripe target for the unscrupulous. Unfortunately, patients themselves are sometimes involved in these schemes like when they give their Medicare numbers in exchange for free products or financial incentives.
USD 60 billion is what Medicare fraud costs the insurers and the taxpayers. This translates to rising health care costs, and taxpayers paying more out-of-the-pocket expenses. This is why, you – the taxpayer, should report medical fraud. If you don’t remember a procedure that is listed in your Medicare summary notice, you should first call your physician. Many times this error is just because of oversight and can be rectified easily. If your healthcare provider however does not help you with your queries or if you cannot call them and you suspect fraudulent behavior, you should contact the Medicare Company that paid the claim. You can also find assistance from the office of the Inspector General they have a hotline where you can report Medicare fraud.
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