Posted on 04/29/2004 1:00:08 AM PDT by sarcasm
WASHINGTON -- Only 13 percent of people who received taxpayer-sponsored motorized wheelchairs from Medicare actually qualified for one, and a third of the recipients didn't need any sort of wheelchair at all, according to a federal audit presented to a U.S. Senate panel Wednesday.
Improperly obtained powered chairs cost Medicare $178 million in 2001 alone, investigators for the Department of Health and Human Services told the Finance Committee. The chairs are among the most expensive hardware Medicare will pay for, costing the government more than $5,000 each.
The Senate committee began its own investigation, culminating in Wednesday's hearing, after the Houston Chronicle reported last year on rampant abuse based in Harris County.
Start-up companies traveled across Texas with vans, rounding up senior citizens with promises of a "free" powered chair. They took them to Houston doctors who signed their Medicare paperwork for cash kickbacks, prosecutors allege.
In 2001, Medicare paid for 3,000 motorized wheelchairs in Harris County, the acknowledged capital of wheelchair scams. In 2002, it paid for 31,000 -- a one-year increase of 933 percent.
The committee also heard testimony from a 24-year-old Oregon woman who pleaded guilty to fraud in such a scam. With no medical experience, Rebecca Lewandowski was able to fill out forms to open her own company and begin billing for powered wheelchairs.
With help from people who were running a similar scam in Long Beach, Calif., she passed inspections by opening an office and falsifying documents. She said her team would go into Spanish-speaking communities and solicit their Medicare identification numbers in exchange for cash or medical supplies, such as walkers or food supplements.
Senior citizens were paid between $800 and $1,500 for their ID numbers, which Lewandowski used to bill the government, even though the people never got chairs.
Health and Human Services' powered-chair audit was compiled from a random statistical sampling of 300 Medicare claims and conducted by its inspector general's office. It found that only 13 percent of people who got a powered chair actually qualified, while about 45 percent should have received a far less expensive manual wheelchair, walker or cane. Nearly one-third of the sample did not qualify for anything, and about 11 percent had paperwork so incomplete that no judgment could be rendered by auditors.
"That, I submit, is not a very good batting average -- in any league," said Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who heads the Finance Committee.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services began a crackdown on fraudulent wheelchair claims, called Operation Wheeler Dealer, after the Chronicle report in August.
Total Medicare spending for powered wheelchairs nationwide had jumped 350 percent from 1999 to 2003, while spending on all Medicare items had grown just 23 percent in the same period. Fraud was deemed so rampant in Harris County, in particular, that all wheelchair claims originating in Houston are getting a separate, individual review by federal workers.
Some legitimate suppliers in Houston claim they are being put out of business by delays in the reviews.
Senators also were told that the Medicare program pays too much for the powered wheelchairs it buys -- compared with other markets such as Veterans Affairs -- leading to even more unnecessary spending.
Congress' General Accounting Office reported that the more than $5,000 that Medicare pays for motorized wheelchairs is substantially higher than the median price that others can negotiate with manufacturers and distributors. Because of this, the GAO officials estimate the program unnecessarily paid between $459 million and $586 million in 2002.
"None of this makes a whole lot of sense to this senator, and I don't think it will make a whole lot of sense to the taxpayers from my home state of Iowa or the other 49 states who have just finished sending much of their hard-earned dollars to Washington during this tax season," Grassley said.
Grassley, whose committee oversees Medicare and Medicaid spending, said he will be looking at recommendations in the coming days to solve problems and propose legislation.
Medicare pays for motorized chairs for people who cannot get around in their homes and cannot operate a manual wheelchair. But many people who could walk without assistance received them. Others received less expensive scooters, even though Medicare was billed for a motorized wheelchair.
Mark McClellan, who heads the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said Wednesday that his office would begin looking at some of its policies to better crack down on the fraudulent abuse. The office intends to begin redefining who should receive the wheelchairs and how they should be given out. It will also solicit bids to lower the cost.
"We are going to do even more to make sure that Medicare funds are spent on patients who need them, and that beneficiaries with disabilities are getting the high-quality, modern services they deserve," McClellan said in a statement.
Only 13 percent of people who received taxpayer-sponsored motorized wheelchairs from Medicare actually qualified for one
This is why the leftists accuse the paper of being too conservative? Its a left-wing rag in reality.
Costing the taxpayers - NOT the "goobermint"!!!!!
Those commercials really pi$$ me off! "We'll help you get a power chair at little or NO cost to you! We do ALL the paperwork..."
"They helped me get a power chair at NO cost to me! I figured that they would do a little paperwork, but I never thought they would work so hard to...."
More "gimme" generation/con-man fleecing of the hardworking taxpayer.
Me, too... I smelled a ripoff the first time I saw one of those commercials.
Besides the obvious "no cost to you" scam ( first thing you learn in business is that somewhere, somehow, everything has to be paid for. Nothing is "free." ) it was apparent that the scooter stores were promising old, sick, lonely people to become their new best friends. Truly revolting to me.
Just until the fraud paperwork goes through, though.
Sad to say, you have that right. I know the system is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. Before my Mother died, she had, literally, wall-to-wall boxes of nebulizer medicine stacked up by the door of her assisted-living cubbyhole-- all purchased via Medicare ( your tax money & mine ) and far in excess of anything she remotely needed, or would even live long enough to use.
Contrast that to my Wife's Mom, who is dying, can hardly stand up, and could really use a power chair- but all Medicare will "give" her is a one-size-fits-all manual chair that is too big to fit in our trucks & vans easily ( or steer around her house ), and which she is apparently going to have to purchase, anyway. It's nuts, just nuts.
Yep. Sure is.
Combine senior citizens with shifty companies, back them up with expensive government entitlement programs administered by inefficient government (union) workers, and all you get is one huge frickin mess.
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