A handful of Senate Democrats Wednesday took up one of the items that will make up their agenda next year--ending waste, fraud and abuse in Medicare.
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chaired the Democratic Agenda Task Force forum along with Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., pledged Democrats will focus their attention on "cutting waste and not benefits, attacking fraud and not seniors, and ending abuse but not quality care."
Armed with anti-Medicare quotes from House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, and former Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole, Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., asserted the GOP's assault on Medicare has gone from "overt to covert."
Honest errors and blatant theft cost taxpayers roughly $23 billion last year, according to June Gibbs Brown, inspector general at the Department of Health and Human Services. Harkin noted the figure almost exactly matches the estimated budget deficit.
"You don't have to be a math whiz to put 23 and 23 together," Harkin said. "If not for Medicare waste, fraud and abuse, we would have a balanced budget today."
William Scanlon of the General Accounting Office told the forum that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and the Balanced Budget Act have aided in checking sloppy or dishonest practices--but he observed that more resources could be needed to ensure the effectiveness of these tools in the future.
Scanlon, along with Brown, said Harkin's suggestion for a two-fold increase in auditing would be a "prudent" step, since every dollar now spent on audits brings in $12 for the Medicare program.
While home healthcare costs have grown by 33 percent a year in the last decade, according to Brown, auditing has not kept pace: In 1989, 60 percent of home healthcare claims were reviewed by home healthcare intermediaries, while now only about 2 percent of claims undergo a review.
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