Bipartisan Support for Fighting Medicare Fraud?
David CallahanThe two political parties can't seem to agree on very much these days, especially when it comes to spending federal dollars. New Republican leaders are determined to cut every discretionary domestic program in sight. But maybe, just maybe, they'll go along with a proposed increase in spending by the Department of Justice to go after healthcare fraud -- spending that would more than pay for itself.
This week DOJ went before Congress to ask for a whopping 22 percent increase in its budget to fight fraud for next year, or $283.4 million. (See testimony below.) The request came just weeks after DOJ and HHS announced that it had recovered $4 billion in funds lost to healthcare fraud. Given that success, it's hard to argue against investing more in anti-fraud efforts. As Senator Tom Harkin pointed out at a hearing this week, "On average, every dollar that the Federal Government spent on these efforts returned $6.80 to the U.S. Treasury."
Republicans have famously argued for years that they are people you elect if you want to go after "waste, fraud, and abuse" in government programs. Too often, though, their anti-government zeal has led them to underfund efforts aimed at nailing fraudsters. Meanwhile, in the past two years, the Obama Administration has shown that it is serious about saving billions of taxpayer dollars by attacking fraud, especially in the healthcare sector.
Yet even as evidence piles up of the Administration's success on this score, it seems that GOP fiscal hawks aren't paying attention. They have proposed deep cuts in funds aimed at reducing healthcare fraud -- cuts that are likely to increase the deficit. Some Republicans may have different ideas, though. At this week's hearing on fraud, organized by Harkin, a top Republican, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, agreed that more must be done to address the problem. Does that mean that he'll defy Tea Party types and support DOJ's budget hike? Stay tuned.
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