Today, health proper care scams is all over the news. There undoubtedly is scams in health proper care. The same is true for every business or endeavor touched by human hands, e.g. banking, credit, insurance policy, politics, etc. There is no question that medical service suppliers who misuse their position and our trust to steal are a issue. So are those from other professions who do the same.

 

Why does health proper care scams appear to get the 'lions-share' of attention? Could it be that it is the perfect vehicle to drive plans for divergent groups where tax payers, health proper care consumers and medical service suppliers are dupes in a health proper care scams shell-game operated with 'sleight-of-hand' precision?

 

Take a closer look and one finds this is no game-of-chance. Taxpayers, consumers and suppliers always lose because the issue with health proper care scams is not just the scams, but it is that our government and insurance providers use the scams issue to further plans while at the same time fail to be accountable and take responsibility for a scams issue they facilitate and allow to flourish.

 

1. Astronomical Cost Estimates

 

What better way to report on scams then to tout scams cost reports, e.g.

 

- "Fraud perpetrated against both public and private wellness plans costs between $72 and $220 billion dollars annually, increasing the cost of health proper care and wellness insurance policy coverage and undermining public trust in our health proper care system... It is no longer a secret that scams represents one of the fastest growing and most costly forms of crime in America today... We pay these costs as tax payers and through higher wellness insurance policy coverage premiums... We must be proactive in combating health proper care scams and misuse... We must also ensure that law enforcement has the tools that it needs to deter, detect, and punish health proper care scams." [Senator Ted Kaufman (D-DE), 10/28/09 press release]

 

- The General Accounting Office (GAO) reports that scams in healthcare ranges from $60 billion dollars to $600 billion dollars per year - or anywhere between 3% and 10% of the $2 trillion health proper care budget. [Health Care Finance News reports, 10/2/09] The GAO is the investigative arm of Congress.

 

- The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) reports over $54 billion dollars is stolen every year in scams designed to stick us and our insurance policy suppliers with fraudulent and illegal medical charges. [NHCAA, web-site] NHCAA was created and is funded by wellness insurance policy coverage companies.

 

Unfortunately, the reliability of the purported reports is dubious at best. Insurers, state and federal agencies, and others may gather scams data related to their own missions, where the kind, quality and volume of data compiled varies widely. David Hyman, professor of Law, University of Maryland, tells us that the widely-disseminated reports of the incidence of health proper care scams and misuse (assumed to be 10% of total spending) lacks any empirical foundation at all, the little we do know about health proper care scams and misuse is dwarfed by what we don't know and what we know that is not so.