Preview

Healthcare Fraud

Powerful Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1998 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Healthcare Fraud
Health Care Fraud

1. Types of Health Care Fraud

A. Health insurance

B. Drug Fraud

C. Punishment

2. Entities involved in Health care fraud

A. Social

a. Individuals

B. Political

a. Oversight

b. Supreme Court input

C. Cultural

3. Technology and health Care Fraud

A. Billing Procedures

B. Unbundling

4. Ethics involved with Fraud/Economic Impact

a. Effects on Health Care

b. Monitor outgoing monies

5. Strategies to resolve current Health Care Fraud issues

a. Combatting Medical Care Fraud

6. Conclusion

7. References

In the United States there are many different types of coverages available for individuals and hospital plans needing insurance coverage. While this can be of great assistance for those suffering from different injuries and ailments, it can also give birth to a vast number of methods to commit torts against the Government, Insurance companies, Health care providers and of course the individual tax payer.

Individuals who feel they are giving or receiving the proper amount for services rendered have come to notice that they have actually become victims of criminal forces. In the following paragraphs I will describe the different units of health care fraud, the effects of health care fraud along with what entities are involved as well as technology and ethics and finish with some strategies to combat health care fraud.

With health care fraud, we must consider this: “There's a group of people who really love the U.S. health care system -- the fraudsters, scammers and organized criminal gangs who are bilking the system of as much as $100 billion a year.” (Kavilanz, January) Some other information in my research stated that almost $50 billion were distributed in doubtful Medicare payments.

One way a criminal can defraud the Medicare system is called the Pay and Chase method. This is due to the fact that

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Powerful Essays

    Is the government at all at fault for fraud at institutions that administer their Medicare programs, due to cut backs that may have led to weak enforcement of the program?…

    • 1172 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    (Price & Norris, 2009) The money lost due to fraud increases the costs of providing a full range of legitimate medical services tremendously. Physicians may perform unnecessary procedures to increase reimbursement, which may compromise the safety of the patient. Further, when medical providers bill for services that were never rendered, they end up creating a false medical history for patients which may hinder them from obtaining disability or life insurance policies, at a later date. An inaccurate medical history also influences treatment decisions and allows some third party insurance companies to deny coverage based on a previous medical condition. Health care fraud also tarnishes the reputation of the medical profession and other health care service providers. Additionally, the efforts by the federal and the state government cost taxpayers billions of dollars a year, thus diverting the scarce tax money from other essential services and meeting the needs of elderly and the poor. This diversion of the taxpayer’s money often results in reduced benefit coverage, changes in eligibility for programs such as Medicaid, higher premiums for individuals or their employers, or higher…

    • 1739 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Better Essays

    The article gives examples of several health care organizations that have been found to be fraudulent, for example, a dermatologist who performed 3,086 medically unnecessary surgeries. The article also documents how Raritan Bay Medical Center agreed to pay 7.5 Million dollars for defrauding Medicare. The False Claims Act enacted by the federal government 1986 was intended to combat fraud and abuse in health care. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (/HIAA) passed in 1996 led to the establishment of Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control program (HCFAC) to further address fraud and abuse in health care. The increased surveillance has helped to reduce fraud and abuse cases by about 5%. According to the article common Types of fraud and abuse are misrepresentation of services with the wrong CPT codes, billing of services that were not rendered, billing for supplies not provided, falsification of records or providing medical services that are not necessary. According to the authors, fraud can be reduced by training and education, implementing computer assisted coding, increase regulation by the federal government or through the use of data modeling or mining. The significance of this example is to show the types of fraud, the various government agencies that work to prevent fraud and ways of combating…

    • 1047 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    This issue came about in 1997 when Rick Scott who is now the governor of Florida was involved in the biggest Medicare fraud case in the US history. After the hospital fined him at $1.7 billion and found him guilty of swindling money from the government, he had to step down as CEO of Columbia/ HCA. As of now he is working on trying to kill off an antifraud database that would track down the fraudulent distribution of addictive prescription drugs in Florida, over the protest of law enforcement officials, Republican state lawmakers, and federal drug policy…

    • 585 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association (NHCAA) estimates that the financial losses due to health care fraud are in the tens of billions…

    • 1070 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In spite of its impressive accomplishments, the U.S. health care system is fraught with problems and dilemmas. There is a growing concern that health care is a big, complex, unmanageable business. In this week…

    • 682 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    Tort Reform

    • 1274 Words
    • 6 Pages

    In the article “Tort Reform: What Is It and How Does It Affect You?” Attorney John R. Mininno states, “Tort reform is an effort to take away the average consumer 's rights to fair compensation for substantial losses brought on by negligent manufacturers, doctors, nurses, or caregivers. Tort reform allows big businesses and other power players to get away with negligence, fraud, or other acts of harm. These corporations and insurance companies, along with their political counterparts and lobbyist, promote an aggressive campaign of propaganda, boasting false economic benefits of tort reform, in hopes to drum up popular support for limiting ordinary citizens their rights. These well-funded lobbyist push for caps on the recoveries that judges and juries can award in litigation and, in turn, aims to limit liability and allow companies to escape full and fair compensation to the people they injure.” (Mininno). In…

    • 1274 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Unlike the employee frauds, where it is important to look at why and not how. Employer frauds are the completely opposite. The why is simple, because they want to reduce costs thus increase profits. The how is what never ceases to amaze. In 2012, eight people are facing charges for Worker’s Compensation frauds and money laundering by involving in a check cashing scheme. Hugo Rodriguez, the ringleader and the owner of a construction company, went out of his way to create numerous shell companies and funneled more than $70 million in order to avoid paying for the insurance premiums21. In 2013, Jess Contreras, the president and CEO…

    • 826 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Best Essays

    Medicare and Medicaid

    • 3491 Words
    • 14 Pages

    Fraud and Abuse of the Medicaid and Medicare programs in the United States is a widespread and pervasive problem. Institutions, health care providers and individual consumers all have a role in fraud and abuse prevention. It impacts everyone even if you do not currently benefit from one of these government programs.…

    • 3491 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Good Essays

    Defensive medicine is when providers prescribed unnecessary medicines and services to avoid liability rather than for the benefit of the patient. According to the study, the Congressional Budget Office then estimated that implementing tort reform would reduce total health care spending by about $11 billion and would reduce federal budget deficits by as much as $54 billion (Congressional documents and Publications, 2013). In addition, using a dataset of health plans representing over 10 million Americans annually between 1998 and 2006, the study found that the most common set of tort reforms during this period reduces premiums of employer-sponsored self-insured health plans by 2.1% (Avraham & Schanzenbach0. However, many argued that Tort reform did not cut health care cost. In article titled “Tort reform' didn't cut health care costs in Texas, study finds”, states that health care spending has increased annually everywhere, including in the states with caps on malpractice payouts and that Medicare payments to doctors in Texas rose 1 to 2 percent faster than the rest of the country (Roser,…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Billing Fraud

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages

    What is Medical Billing Fraud? It is an attempt to fraudulently obtain payments from insurance carriers. Medicare and Medicaid are the most susceptible to fraud because of their payment arrangements. Fraud in medical billing cost tax payers and medical providers millions of dollars annually. In 1996, HIPPA established the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program (HCFAC) to help combat medical billing and health care fraud. Fraud is an act done with the knowledge that you are doing wrong.…

    • 1005 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Doctors and health care facilities must cut cost, oftentimes resulting in closers of said facilities. A major negative aspect is the effect on the federal deficit. There are often expansions to Medicare without any congressional action or approval on how or where the funds come from to pay for these expansions. Therefore, the cost of these expansions gets added to the federal deficit, which in turn drives up taxes and the cost of medical care to privately insured individuals. Fraud and abuse are another concerning negative. The government processes an estimated 1.2 billion Medicare claims each year by a computer often not catching a fraudulent claim. The Government Accountability Office estimates that Medicare makes about $17 billion improper payments each year, many due to fraudulent or erroneous overpayments. Types of fraud include: billing by health care providers for services not rendered, billing for procedures not delivered, misrepresenting services, unbundling services that would normally be billed as one service, billing for unnecessary services, duplicate billing, and falsifying cost reports resulting in increased payment to health care…

    • 475 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Medical Identity Theft

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Medical identity theft is rapidly growing. Medical identity theft is when someone takes your medical identity and uses it to get medical care and/or financial gain. There is ways to help protect yourself from this crime you need to check your medical information. If you find errors you need to file a police report and give copies of the police report to the appropriate people. You also have to get the errors you find in your medical records corrected, which can be hard to do because your information could be in multiple locations.…

    • 638 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Obamacare

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Private medical insurance is valuable to have, but can come with many disadvantages for the consumer. The article “the U.S. Healthcare system” focused on the faults of the United States healthcare system when compared to other countries with Universal healthcare. America has the most expensive healthcare system in the world. One reason for the rising cost of healthcare in America is that an estimated “19.3 to 24.1 % of the money is spent on administration cost. Obama wants to make sure that America is not being taken advantage of by insurance and prescription drug companies. Some insurance companies are overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance, which is causing patients to have to pay more in order to be seen by a doctor.…

    • 353 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Medicare Persuasive Essay

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages

    believe fraud is much more common in Medicare than in it is in payments by…

    • 649 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays