Consumer Law

Will Health Care Reform Stop Fraudulent Medical Billing Practices?

By Peter Orville, Attorney at Law

Congress is considering proposals that would reform the health care system.  Some, like Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont are citing massive fraud by the health care industry and calling on “real health care reform to prevent major insurance companies, drug companies and hospital chains from perpetrating fraud and abuse on government health care programs and individuals.”  Sanders claims that this abuse is driving up health care costs in American by billions of dollars each year.

Sanders, a member of the Senate Health, Education Labor and Pensions Committee points to a huge increase in the costs connected to health care bureaucrats and bill collectors.  In the last 30 years, “administrative personnel has grown by 25 times the number of physicians.”  He points to systemic fraud perpetrated by private insurance companies, private drug companies and private for-profit hospitals as reasons that our health care is “the most costly, wasteful, complicated and bureaucratic in the world.”  

A review of court records and other public documents, according to Sanders, shows that billions more dollars are lost to fraud and outright corruption.  “This is not the case of ‘one bad player’ acting illegally…but a situation where fraud appears …part of the normal business model”

Full post as published by Credit Law Network on June 30, 2009 (boomark / email).