$55 billion in improper HHS payments in 2007

According to The Swine Line, the blog of Citizens Against Government Waste, work has begun in Washington to calculate the improper payments made by its various federal agencies:

The GAO just released its most recent report on estimated improper payments made by federal agencies. Overall 2007 estimates for improper payments (overpayments or underpayments, but guess which one is most prevalent?) were $55 billion. The most vulnerable federal program was the Medicaid fee-for-service program, which had an estimated $13 billion in improper payments and that was only for its fee-for-service program and only for six months worth of claims. Government Executive Magazine reports that:

HHS is not the only agency still working to develop improper payment estimates. GAO reported that the fiscal 2007 estimate did not include data from 14 risk-susceptible programs with outlays of $170 billion. Nine of these fall under the Homeland Security Department and were only recently identified as risk-susceptible. GAO considered the identification of programs as an important step toward proper reporting and prevention of improper payments. Twelve of the 14 programs that did not report estimates aim to do so for 2008. The other two did not report target implementation dates.