Hope is faith holding out its hand in the dark. ~George Iles
As Congress debates the government’s rate in health care, a report released on Wednesday found that state and federal officials failed to detect millions of dollars in Medicaid prescription drug abuse.
An audit of the government in five large states found about 65,000 instances of beneficiaries improperly obtaining potentially addictive drugs at a cost of about $65 million during 2006 and 2007 – including thousands of prescriptions written for dead patients or by people posing as doctors.
The report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) represents “an enormous opportunity to save money,” said Senator Tom Carper of Delaware.
When bills for the doctors’ visits are added, along with the possibility of Medicaid fraud in states not reviewed by the GAO, Carper said “we’re talking hundreds of millions of dollars.”
The GAO audit focused on 10 types of frequently abused prescription drugs. The states targeted by the report – California, Illinois, New York, North Carolina and Texas – accounted for 40 percent of Medicaid’s prescription drug payments in 2006 and 2007. These states are not fully taking advantage of federal databases or technology that could identify fraud.