Newt on Henry Waxman
This is Newt Gingrich, writing in the Washington Examiner:
Over his career, Waxman has never missed an opportunity to cut funds for anti-fraud efforts at the Department of Health and Human Services. He has consistently opposed introducing market-oriented competitive bidding in Medicare, which would greatly reduce massive fraud, particularly in the durable medical equipment space.
He also opposes efforts to promote transparency for providers of healthcare services, despite the fact that 98 percent of Americans believe they have the right to know cost and quality information. One would think that making it easier to know which hospital is more likely to kill you would be pretty non-controversial.
I think Newt is right about Waxman.
Many state officials consider Medicaid to be an economic development program. Because the states pay less than half the cost, they only have half the incentive to control waste, fraud and abuse. Nowhere is this more true than New York State, which spends $50 billion annually on Medicaid. Nearly one-in-five Medicaid dollars nationwide are spent in New York State. Recently New York City and New York State both agreed to cough up nearly $500 million in funds for services that were improperly billed to the federal government. The whistleblower gets to pocket $10 million. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/nyregion/22whistle.html
Devon, we need someone to blow the whistle on Waxman.
Joe, Newt just did.
The “competitive” bidding program for DME has nothing to do with fraud prevention. Fraud is large and serious but completely separate problem than the bid program, which is mandated consolidation program designed to eliminate competitors. Linking these two issues is baloney, as is the suggestion that somehow Rep. Waxman approves of fraud. Give me a break. I work for the durable medical equipment sector and no one wants to see and end to fraud more than we do, hence our 13-point plan to increase punishments, raise the bar for Medicare participation, etc. See http://www.aahomecare.org/stopfraud.
Just try getting a straight answer about costs from your insurance company. Where is the outrage expressed here when trying to force insurance to reveal the true cost of buisness? They fight that tooth and nail because they KNOW that if we truly saw that they charge $500 for an item that costs $1, (insurance makes 450% profit margins), They would be seen for the criminal organization that it is. Racketeering plain and simple.