Illegal immigrants and prison inmates received more than $120 million in Medicare services from 2009-2011 despite federal law that makes them ineligible for the program, according to two new reports from the HHS inspector general.
The issue, according to the reports, is timing. When Medicare is alerted that someone is incarcerated or undocumented, its contractors help prevent payments from going out the door. But often, Medicare’s databases aren’t up to date, and improper payments go out.
Best part? There’s no internal procedure in place to recoup the money.
This is just today’s story, of course. Medicare has been riddled with tales like this since its inception. Waste and fraud have always managed to make the actual cost of the program far exceed projections, as is usually the case with federal “help”.
Yay, government health care!
Medicare waste and fraud totals $70 billion a year, roughly $650 per American worker per year, according to the Cato Institute’s 2010 numbers.
In other words, if you make $45,000 a year or less and pay the 1.45% federal tax rate to Medicare, every dime of your Medicare taxes ends up wasted as fraud.