NewsOK member benefits

GAO again labels Medicare, Medicaid as “high risk” programs, cites $63 billion in “improper payments”

Published: February 14, 2013 Comment on this article

Sean Higgins

Every year the Government Accountability Office releases a list of “high risk” federal programs, the risk being “their vulnerabilities to fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement, or are most in need of transformation.” A total of thirty programs are on the 2013 list, which was released today.

They include Medicare and Medicaid, which combined made more than $63 billion in “improper payments.”

Here’s what the GAO had to say about Medicare:

In 2012, the Medicare program covered more than 49 million elderly and disabled beneficiaries at an estimated cost of $555 billion, and reported improper payments estimated to be more than $44 billion.

And here’s its summary of Medicaid:

In its 2012 financial report, HHS estimated—on the basis of individual state error rates from a sample of 17 states reviewed on an annual rotating basis—a national improper payment rate for Medicaid of 7.1 percent (with the federal share estimated at $19.2 billion).

Click to read full article at Washington Examiner