When did Social Security and Medicare/aid become an entitlement? Both sides of the aisle have started referring to them as such. They did it when they stopped treating it as something we have a right to and started treating it as something we think we have a right to.
Over the next decade or so as everyone battles to fix Medicare and Social Security, referring to the programs as entitlements will help us all slowly realize they are something we wouldn’t want in the first place.
There are many talks about cuts to these programs. The argument being they don’t pay for themselves, there are boomers retiring that will bankrupt the system, and that the programs are going to explode the national debt.
Many reforms are proposed, so far the only real efforts we’ve seen passed are in health care with the hopes that it will reduce the overall cost of covering so many people. If that doesn’t work then real cuts will happen and everyone will see their benefits fall in some way.
Personally I’m less concerned with all that crap. For now I really want the focus to be on reducing fraud. Allow the market to sort out the costs of healthcare, which I think it can with only minimal nudges from the government.
What we should focus more attention on with entitlements are the fraudulent and wasteful claims made by greedy healthcare sector workers. It was only recently made public that a healthcare company in Maryland had defrauded the government of over a hundred million dollars since 2003. They were filing false claims for services they weren’t providing. Thankfully, many people were prosecuted criminally and the company is being fined massive amounts of money.
But I’m troubled out how easy it must be to do this. It took an actual patient looking into his records to catch the fraud. And then, when he tried to report it no one would listen to him. He had to hire a lawyer just to get anywhere with the government. He deservedly gets a huge check for his catch and no longer qualifies for Medicaid (in a good way).
How often is this happening and how often does it get caught? Clearly if you have to hire an attorney just to report fraud even if it’s discovered nothing may ever come from it. I’m pretty sure the government should be focusing a lot more of it’s efforts on audits and fraud.
Naturally of course so many government agencies were involved in the fraud cause they even fought over who gets to take the credit. We’re all winners here.
Read: Tuckerton man’s resolve helps uncover multimillion-dollar health care fraud
 By The Weakonomist |
The Weakonomist is the founder of Weakonomics. Clicking the picture of the puppy will tell you more about him. If you like what you're reading consider subscribing to the blog, following him on Twitter, and checking out the related posts below. Please consider a donation if you really enjoy Weakonomics. Also keep in mind that nothing I say can be construed as financial advice. |
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