Yeah, Medicare is a government program so you'll find that. Oh, wait...ObamaCare is a government program.
Medicare Loses Nearly Four Times as Much Money as Health Insurers Make
In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion in 2010 (according to Fortune 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4.
This is sobering news for the minority of Americans who (for some reason) continue to think that government-run health care is a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Last year, total outlays for Medicare were $509 billion; therefore, Medicare spent nearly 10 percent of its outlays on fraudulent or improper claims. Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.”
The Democrats are screaming about the Republicans wanting to cut a measly $61 billion from the budget when this GAO report identified over $200 billion of waste by duplication alone.
That could easily be doubled by identifying the fraud involved in all government programs. God bless Senator Coburn for getting this report published. It certainly should be thrown in the face of Big Government lovers of both parties.