Program that can recover billions of dollars for Medicare/Medicaid neglected by Congress

The Citizens Against Government Waste newsletter E-News from CAGW reports on a new way to audit and recover billions of dollars per year for Social Security. Unfortunately, the ways of Washington haven't given it the consideration American taxpayers must demand from them.

CAGW reiterated support for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) efforts to recover hundreds of millions of dollars in improper payments made to hospitals and healthcare providers using the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) Program. RACs, which are private-sector auditing companies that specialize in uncovering improper payments, have offered a commonsense solution to the leakage of billions of dollars in overpayments and underpayments to federal healthcare contractors. Audits being conducted in three states (California, Florida, and New York) as part of a CMS demonstration project launched in 2005 have exposed $299.5 million in improper payments, and CMS recently announced that the payment error rate has dropped significantly, translating into $11 billion that the government has retained instead of seeing it paid to healthcare providers who billed for it erroneously. Nonetheless, parochial interests are prompting some politicians to line up to gut the program before it rolls out nationwide. “This program is reducing billing errors, fraud, and abuse, and now it is being undermined by the very people who were elected to protect taxpayers,” declared CAGW President Tom Schatz. Read more about efforts to stymie Medicare provider audits.