Medicare Needs To Diagnose Itself
Does the Medicare program need reform? Well, not if you approve of using millions of tax dollars to pay health-care companies for coffee mugs, umbrellas and golf tees emblazoned with corporate logos; liquor for meetings of executive bigwigs; and earrings, cuff-link sets and other tchotchkes.
For months now, members of Congress have been telling us that the Medicare program is going broke. All sorts of proposals have been floated as to how to save the program and thus prevent what would be a human and a political disaster.
Sacrifice should be expected from every American if it is needed to preserve a program as vital as Medicare. But, in looking for solutions to the Medicare crisis, the current Congress seems capable of locating only those solutions that ask the elderly either to pay more or accept less.
Meanwhile, the Medicare system is rife with corporate fraud and ripoffs, according to the U.S. Health Department’s Office of the Inspector General and auditors of the Health Care Financing Administration and the General Accounting Office.
The Medicare billing practices of a large Georgia home health care company, ABC Home Health Services Inc., which recently changed its name to First American Health Care, raise the question of why Congress is interested in demanding sacrifices only from current and future Medicare beneficiaries.
ABC reportedly submitted and got more than $14 million in illegal expenses for Medicare reimbursement. According to the Biomedical Market Newsletter, the company asked taxpayers to cough up $1.76 million for salary overcharges, $1 million for conference expenses and tens of thousands of dollars for corporate mugs, booze, golf tees and earrings. Medicare was not so insolvent that the company could not get it to shell out $84,341 for gourmet popcorn.
A few years ago, a major university was found to have included charges for liquor and flowers in federal research grants. Congress had a fit and began slashing millions of dollars in overhead rates from all federal university grants. Universities do not have the same lobbying clout as insurance companies and private businesses.
For years, corporations and insurance companies have been driving up the cost of Medicare through all sorts of creative accounting practices. Yet, Congress continues to let hordes of health-care lobbyists - many nattily attired in their Medicare-purchased, logo-adorned cuff links - whisper in their ears.
If you listen carefully to your representatives in Congress, it is clear that those inside the Beltway intend to stick those who get Medicare coverage with the solution to the program’s financial woes.
Before that happens, you should insist that they also stick it to those who spend their days golfing, lunching and wolfing down high-priced snacks with congressmen while putting the tab on America’s Medicare bill.
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Art Caplan King Features Syndicate