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Medicare paid millions to dead patients, illegal immigrants, probe finds

Grim17

Grim17

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If the government waste and incompetence is this bad with Medicare, what do you think it's going to be like when Obamacare fully kicks in?



Medicare paid millions to dead patients, illegal immigrants, probe finds
By Stephen DinanThe Washington Times
Thursday, October 31, 2013

Medicare paid $23 million for dead patients in 2011 and $29 million for drug benefits for illegal immigrants from 2009 to 2011, according to a report Thursday from the Health and Human Services inspector general.

The investigators said Medicare has safeguards to try to stop payments to dead patients, but it still ended up sending out the $23 million anyway.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — the same agency that is struggling to fix the broken Obamacare website — acknowledged the problems and said it will try to take steps to fix them.

“We agree that in cases where the information indicates an individual is not lawfully present in the United States, that individual should not be permitted to enroll or to remain enrolled in a Part D plan during the period where he or she is not eligible to receive federal benefits,” Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of CMS, said in response to the report about illegal immigrants getting benefits.
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Medicare paid millions to dead patients, illegal immigrants, probe finds - Washington Times
 
Grim17 said:
If the government waste and incompetence is this bad with Medicare, what do you think it's going to be like when Obamacare fully kicks in?
Medicare paid millions to dead patients, illegal immigrants, probe finds - Washington Times
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Any idea who said this??
"So today, I am announcing an additional $313 billion in savings that will rein in unnecessary spending, and increase efficiency and the quality of care—savings that will ensure that we have nearly $950 billion set aside to offset the cost of health care reform over the next ten years,"
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Have to wonder how the dead spent all that money.

Bling to go with their wings maybe.
 
I am a ;itt;e confused based on the rticle that was linked in the OP how they paid dead patients anything. With part D maybe if they were on automatic mail order refills or something or relatives called in their refills after they croaked, but otherwise.....
 
Grim17 said:
If the government waste and incompetence is this bad with Medicare, what do you think it's going to be like when Obamacare fully kicks in?
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Any large scale system will be imperfect and while that's no reason not to try to improve, some people will always fall through the net. I don't think it's anything special about it being government run though. Private healthcare isn't immune to fraud and errors, the key differences being they'll tend to favour not paying when they should rather than the other way around and there often being less scope for independent monitoring and regulation of their errors.
 
HonestJoe said:
Any large scale system will be imperfect and while that's no reason not to try to improve, some people will always fall through the net. I don't think it's anything special about it being government run though. Private healthcare isn't immune to fraud and errors, the key differences being they'll tend to favour not paying when they should rather than the other way around and there often being less scope for independent monitoring and regulation of their errors.
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Private companies which commit fraud can be arrested, fined, and sent to jail. The State, as we see here, will do nothing to those who break the law or the trust of the American people. Instead the guilty will take an early retirement, and a quite significant pension along with it. The ongoing deceits, meanwhile, continue as intended.
 
They probably vote for olooser human too (but then without voter ID how would we ever know).
 
American said:
Obviously it didn't happen. Are you surprised.
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Not terribly. I know he has lied since his first few speeches and you probably did as well. But the lies are not important to the left if, in the end result, they get the big government they want, especially from a candidate who fits their idea of the New America. An interesting and insightful paragraph from Mark Steyn nails it.

For decades, western elites have been bored by their own traditions and festishized the exotic. Obama was both the beneficiary of this syndrome and its apotheosis. He was living his own COEXIST sticker: his parents were Kansan and Kenyan, as if paired by an alphabetically minded dating agency; he was Hawaiian and Indonesian; for white liberals he offered absolution from racial guilt, but he wasn't one of those in-your-face types like the Reverend Al and the Reverend Jesse yelling grievance jingles all day long; he was a community organizer from the mean streets of Chicago, yet he was also by some happy if vague process an alumnus of half the schools in the Ivy League, and he had the great good fortune not to live in any of the "communities" he "organized" but instead in the more salubrious Hyde Park, a community organized by John D. Rockefeller's money; he embodied "change," but he peddled the same reassuringly shopworn bromides ("America, this is our moment") whose woozy evasions liberals chose to regard as the second coming of Cicero; he was kinda Christian (albeit of the paranoid, neo-segregationist, Afro-nationalistic branch) but sorta Muslim (from a Jakarta madrassah, but don't worry, not one of the heavy-duty kind); he had a white grandmother but also an undocumented auntie served with an unenforced deportation order. If that's not the all-American resumé for the twenty-first century, what is?
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Which indicates another problem with the US's defunct health care system, and another reason why Obama fixed it at least partially.

Fixing it is something that even the most rabid and frothing at the mouth on the right were fully aware of back in the days before they had Obama to hate.
 
Grim17 said:
If the government waste and incompetence is this bad with Medicare, what do you think it's going to be like when Obamacare fully kicks in?
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Or universal?



Here's the deal: PPACA is a terrible law by virtually ANY preexisting political standard, conservative or liberal. When Obama apologists finally admit defeat on that point, they retreat to the position of "well I wanted single payer all along so…"

And stories like this point to the drawbacks of single payer. Government taking over the industry doesn't magically solve the problem. It still has to manage all this ****. And Medicare is the closest example to what that would look like. Medicare is the biggest and most problematic government entitlement program we have, by far. It covers way too much, at too high of prices, as a matter of routine. And then there are these cases of outright incompetence on top of it.

We cannot have a universal health care system that "covers way too much" the way Medicare currently does.
 
pbrauer said:
Reading the story from the Moony Times, since they provide no links to the government, I have to assume they pulled this crap out of their asses.
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I expected nothing less from you Pete. You always dismiss the things that don't fit with your political beliefs.
 
Grim17 said:
I expected nothing less from you Pete. You always dismiss the things that don't fit with your political beliefs.
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Give me some links to the government and I ready to believe it. Okay?
 
Grim17 said:
FFS Pete, I didn't write the story.
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I realize you didn't write the story, but I am not ready to believe it until there is link to the Medicare website. The story may in fact be true, but I see no evidence of that. The Washington Times is notorious for RW propaganda stories.
 
Grant said:
Private companies which commit fraud can be arrested, fined, and sent to jail. The State, as we see here, will do nothing to those who break the law or the trust of the American people. Instead the guilty will take an early retirement, and a quite significant pension along with it. The ongoing deceits, meanwhile, continue as intended.
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Slow down there. I was talking about private companies or government as victims of fraud, not instigators. They're obviously responsible for implementing systems to minimise fraud and errors but as I said, nobody can eliminate the risks entirely. Again, I don't see anything in the OP article that indicates the scale and scope of problems suffered by the Medicare system are significantly different to what you'd expect from any similarly large scale and complex system.
 
Grim17 said:
If the government waste and incompetence is this bad with Medicare, what do you think it's going to be like when Obamacare fully kicks in?
Medicare paid millions to dead patients, illegal immigrants, probe finds - Washington Times
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More pathetic CON games, tell half the story as if it is the entire deal... funny you stopped your direct quote where you did... let us continue shall we???

"The payouts are not large- they amount to a fraction of a percent of what Medicare pays out each year...."

Lets look at the Medicare budget of 2011- 489.3 BILLION dollars vs the 23 million for dead folks and 29 million spread over 3 years for drug prescriptions. Less than a fraction of 1% by a HUGE margin. :shock:

I do note the article and the OP fail to mention the total expenditure. I'd say businesses across the nation can only WISH their losses from theft was that low!!!! :doh

In 2006 Walmart posted 348.6 BILLION in sales and 3 BILLION in theft loss. 47% from their own employees.
 
notquiteright said:
More pathetic CON games, tell half the story as if it is the entire deal... funny you stopped your direct quote where you did... let us continue shall we???

"The payouts are not large- they amount to a fraction of a percent of what Medicare pays out each year...."

Lets look at the Medicare budget of 2011- 489.3 BILLION dollars vs the 23 million for dead folks and 29 million spread over 3 years for drug prescriptions. Less than a fraction of 1% by a HUGE margin. :shock:

I do note the article and the OP fail to mention the total expenditure. I'd say businesses across the nation can only WISH their losses from theft was that low!!!! :doh

In 2006 Walmart posted 348.6 BILLION in sales and 3 BILLION in theft loss. 47% from their own employees.
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I guess Medicare didn't pay out millions to dead people and illegal immigrants... My mistake.

<sarcasm off>
 
notquiteright said:
More pathetic CON games, tell half the story as if it is the entire deal... funny you stopped your direct quote where you did... let us continue shall we???

"The payouts are not large- they amount to a fraction of a percent of what Medicare pays out each year...."

Lets look at the Medicare budget of 2011- 489.3 BILLION dollars vs the 23 million for dead folks and 29 million spread over 3 years for drug prescriptions. Less than a fraction of 1% by a HUGE margin. :shock:

I do note the article and the OP fail to mention the total expenditure. I'd say businesses across the nation can only WISH their losses from theft was that low!!!! :doh

In 2006 Walmart posted 348.6 BILLION in sales and 3 BILLION in theft loss. 47% from their own employees.
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Leave it to the right wing to make a mountain out of an ant hill. They don't like Medicare so they are going to shine a light on it.
 
Grim17 said:
I guess Medicare didn't pay out millions to dead people and illegal immigrants... My mistake.

<sarcasm off>
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More CON games. I didn't deny there were payments to dead folks and ineligible drug prescriptions. But what CONs do is fail to put a tiny fraction of the Medicare budget into context... something many CONs have to do or they would sound pathetic....

32 +- million out of an almost half TRILLION budget- either the CONs are bad at math or love making mountains out of molehills... :doh

The CON beloved Private Sector should do so well.... :roll:
 
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