New Florida Sen. George LeMieux took to the Senate floor to announce his first piece of legislation: a bill aimed at cracking down on one of South Florida's growth industries -- health care fraud.
Among the provisions, LeMieux proposes requiring background checks for health care providers and suppliers affiliated with Medicare and Medicaid, using technology to detect fraud before claims are paid and appointing a Chief Health Care Fraud Prevention Officer within the Department of Health and Human Services – to fight health care fraud nationwide.
"We are losing billions of dollars to criminals – money that would otherwise be used to care for our people,” LeMieux said. "At a minimum, we lose $60 billion every year to health care fraud. Some estimates have this number as high as $226 billion. We might not agree on how to implement healthcare reform but we can all agree to fight waste, fraud, and abuse."
Here's LeMieux on the floor.
As Reagan once said There are more people taking care of the White House lawn than policing Medicare/Medicaid Fraud. Tort Reform combined with stringent fraud abuse stopping measures could save us hundreds of billions of dollars.
These of course are the two thing congress is not focusing on.
Posted by: Bob in Boynton | November 04, 2009 at 12:30 PM