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Tom Coburn Has Medicare Fraud in His Sights

By: Ben Domenech (Diary)  |  September 30th, 2010 at 11:07 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Senator Trainwreck

When it comes to solving the multi-billion-dollar challenge of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, Oklahoma Senator (and physician) Tom Coburn has led the way in calling for innovative approaches to fraud prevention. Now he’s introduced legislation focused on addressing the problem. It may not go anywhere in this Congress, but expect it to get a lot of consideration early next year.

“This act does several things to target fraud. One of the biggest problems we face is providers and suppliers who are banned in one State, but then just jump to another,” Coburn told me in an interview today. “So we’re going to give the Secretary [of HHS] the ability share information to a greater degree, so we can track and identify providers and suppliers excluded from participation.”

The bill, S. 3900, is entitled the “Fighting Fraud and Abuse to Save Taxpayers’ Dollars” or “FAST” Act, and was introduced in the House by Republican Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois. Both attended the White House health summit in the Spring, where Coburn questioned President Barack Obama on a lack of innovation in combating fraud. He also denounces as “spurious” claims by the White House last week that repealing Obamacare means opening the floodgates for fraud, and says “It’s already readily apparent that this plan doesn’t solve the cost problem.”

Read more of my interview with Coburn here, and read more about his legislation here.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://charlemagne-the-hammer.blogspot.com/ DerKrieger

    this cool thing called the Internet?

    I’ve yet to read a proposal to post the entire federal budget and the budgets of each and every bureaucracy, office, committee, et al on line for all Americans to see. If the Federal government really wants to cut the budget then let We the People take a look at it and make some polite suggestions. I’ll be the collective eyes of millions of Americans can find hundreds of billions of waste to cut.

    The same with those Medicare and Medicaid suppliers banned from a state. Post them online. Transparency to the government is like sunshine to a vampire only in this case it’s the bloodsucking crony capitalists, seedy organizations like ACORN, and duplicitous pols that will sizzle if exposed to the light of day.

    The Federal government borrowed $787 BILLION dollars and I want to know where every last dime went.

    • walter

      That we should be asking our representatives while at town hall meetings this year. Sure they all talk about it while at the campaign, most recently Obama… yeah right. 30 times he spoke of transparency. They had no intention of it. The republicans should do well with it, should they win in Nov. Start posting budgets on the web like advertisements on telephone poles in art ditricts!

    • llou25

      Everything you want to know about the federal budget for the year 2011 can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget

      You can look at the federal budget for 2010 at:
      http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy10/browse.html

      These contain PDF files and also provide links to all sorts of budget information.

  • mirac777

    Every bill is “supposed” to be written with careful planning to reduce the possibilities of fraud. This no longer happens. Today politicians just look for ways to inject earmarks, and pork into the bills. When reducing fraud, not many want to mention Welfare fraud.This theft of tax dollars has more than tripled in the last 2 years.The race based reparations, and assorted liberal groups that are behind them, have been bullying Congress for decades.
    Obama is pushing a socialism that is based on wealth redistibution which looks to be a form of class warfare until we look deeper. Poor people against the evil rich people. What is never mentioned in this scheme is the reasons behind certain groups being poorer than others. Democrats have created a complete generation of people who want nothing more than to be career welfare families.
    They dont go to school to learn and better themselves , because the gov’t will take care of them .They arent taught good work habits or family values at home from the start. They aquire the mindset that the world owes them everything in life, instead of the idea that you must work for what you want and need in life. Complicating this whole issue is the educational system. High school graduates who can read or write at a fifth grade level are being let into college and given defacto- fake degrees.Then they will be put into gov’t healthcare jobs.There goes the idea of quality healthcare for all in this country.
    Across the board people are being given preferrential treatment based on race and the “poor minority” logo. Of course this is too politically incorrect ( so we have been manipulated into thinking so) for politicians to admit. This is a huge form of FRAUD being pushed onto the tax-paying, working people.
    If you choose to ignore these facts just remember one thing here: The US Census demanded that you put your race on it. And silly old me thought that was ILLEGAL in this country!

    • mirac777

      Should be CAN”T read at a fith grade level. Apologies.

  • dmartin

    Lets not get rid of our heroin habit, lets just get it under control. Anyone who believes it is possible to keep waste and fraud out of a government program is pathetically naive., and controling it misses the point entirely anyway. HHS should not exist at the federal level, PERIOD. This will be labeled a radical statement by the overwhelming majority of us, which I see as proof that we are in an irreversible state of decline. Eliminating programs like HHS, EPA, HUD, FHA, not to mention social security, medicare, education, energy, and most of the rest of the alphabet soup of federal departments is not a radical proposal, the establishment of these blatantly unconstitutional entities was, and someone should have said so! Unfortunately, the genie is out of the botttle and there’s probably no putting it back. The best we will get is Coburn (ET AL), trying to keep out heroin habit under control.

    010-012 represents our last chance to reverse the government tide. If Coburn, and other like minded beaurocrats are the best among us that we can summon to the cause, we are doomed.

    • acat

      Or, if you prefer, perfection is the enemy of good.

      In more concrete terms, while I absolutely agree that all the TLAs (Three Letter Acronyms) you list don’t belong at the Fed level, I will cheer for even the slightest movement to the Right.

      The key point for me isn’t that Coburn wants to give the States more information to prosecute fraudsters. That is a move to the Right, as it allows different States to proceed as they wish, as the founders intended.

      Having the elimination of these departments as a goal is excellent. Make bold plans. Now, what’s the strategery to get rid of them? Coburn seems to have one – turn them into information clearinghouses with no real authority. What’s yours?

      (“just get rid of them” isn’t a strategy, “elect a president who will terminate them” is a strategy, but it would be a very hard sell…)

      Mew

      • dmartin

        I call a reduction in the pace of leftward motion, and even Coburns watered down approach is likely to go nowhere. If I have a choice of a death by a thousand cuts or a gun to the head I say pull the trigger.

        Even electing a president that might be willing to terminate some of the programs will do no good if the conversation never gets started. We seem to be operating under the assumption that the American people wont buy the fact that so much of what the federal government does today is not within its constitutional authority. I would like to see someone with access to a microphone at least give it a try. At the very least it is a better position to start bargaining from than where Coburn is. The seed wont grow if it isn’t planted.

        • acat

          because the fact is Coburn’s approach is a move to decentralize, and that’s a Good Thing. Not a large “the EPA is disbanded” step, but moving the prosecution from the Fed to the States is a good start – a State can always say “we decline to prosecute”, after all.

          I’m not sure what “the conversation to get started” looks like to you. The Tea Parties are talking about reducing the scope and cost of government, and electing small-government conservatives is one of the key steps.

          I’ll applaud Coburn for what he got right, but I’ll be right there holding a torch under his feet if he appears to waffle.

          Mew

        • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

          That’s how we got here. That’s the only way to get out.

          When faced with the task of eating an elephant, it’s best to do it one bite at a time.

          • kestrel

            involving Becker and Acat?

            (I’m searching back to find out why the good Dr. Coburn is called Sen. Trainwreck. A term of affection for jamming Democrat works, I guess.)

    • llou25

      can be eliminated in the following manner, but as you speak of Social Security, Medicare, transportation and energy as well as education, let all those who steadfastly believe in the demise of these programs do the following:

      1. Refuse any Social Security Checks you may receive. This would include not only those sent after the age of 65, but amounts paid to children of deceased fathers and payments sent as survivor benefits.

      2. Pay for all medical expenses after age 65 when private insurance is often no longer available. Do not use Medicare to pay for any hospital, doctor or medication.

      3. Do not travel interstate highways and let each state be responsible for it’s own state to state roadways.

      4. Let each state be responsible for power the power grids to carry energy across their own state. Power capacity would vary from state to state as costs would be relegated to each state’s ability to pay for this.

      5. Let all public schools evolve into semi-private schools, using money in each state from state and county funds and charges levied to parents of school children, the amount based on how many children each family has in school at any given time.

      If, after the age of 65, those who cannot afford to pay their own medical expenses or have no other means of support, should look to their children to contribute a substantial sum each month to contribute to their living expenses including medical costs.

      These actions would go a long way toward cutting government expense and involvement in our lives.