The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Barack Obama, Fraud Buster

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As part of his ongoing road show to make his supposedly closing argument to pass a health care bill, President Obama used a trip to St. Louis as an oppourtunity to step up efforts to root out Medicare fraud by increasing audits. I'm glad that Obama is drawing attention to the issue, which I wrote about at greater length last fall -- by some estimates $100 billion or more is being stolen from the easily-gamed system. But with that said, I have no idea why confronting Medicare fraud would require passage of a massive national health care program that raises taxes, forces individuals to purchase government-approved insurance against their will, and creates a new entitlement in which individuals use government subsidies to purchase government-designed insurance policies on government-run exchanges.

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burt| 3.10.10 @ 6:31PM

This so called medicare Fraud program that OBAMA IS TRYING TO TAKE CREDIT FOR ALREADY EXISTS AND IT WAS SET UP BY PRES BUSH back in 2006 .
This program called the Medicare RAC audit program and it started back in 2006 !

Pete| 3.10.10 @ 6:54PM

Biggest bang for the buck on fraud investigation would be to investigate the "stimulus" package.

JimE| 3.10.10 @ 7:12PM

ACORN is doing the audits.

Gene| 3.10.10 @ 9:27PM

One way to deal more effectively with medicare fraud is pass federl law to punish perpatrators with mandatory minimum of at least 20 years in federal prison , that would make some of tem think twice before commiting the crime,maybe we could stary filling that empty Illinios prison , the one they wanted to fill with gitmo killers

Grzmlyk| 3.11.10 @ 11:36AM

Obama knows best, you haters on the right.

I mean, just look at the $862 billion "Stimulous" package. Not a dollar of waste, fraud or abuse there.

All politicians lie. But Obama is in a league of his own.

Marc Jeric| 3.11.10 @ 12:06PM

Medicare and Medicaid fraud? I remember the case of a Washington DC doctor who billed Medicaid for office visits - an average of 140 patients per work day; and they paid up!