Feds Waste $100 Billion Per Year in Improper Payments! Will Grow with Obamacare, Medicaid Expansion!

Reason columnist and Mercatus Center economist Veronique de Rugy
and her colleague Jason Fichtner have
produced the chart above. The total comes in over $100 billion
made in terms of waste, fraud, and abuse of various programs. Even
worse:

The three largest programs in terms of improper spending amounts
are all health-care related. Medicare Fee-for-Service, Medicare
Advantage (Part C), and Medicaid top the chart with a combined
$61.9 billion in improper payments. As economist Timothy
Taylor points out, these high improper funding amounts are of
particular concern in light of the federal government’s expanded
intervention in health-care markets, as improper payments may
likely plague new federal health programs as well.

While people of good conscience on both sides of the political
aisle can debate the merits of whether or not government should be
involved in certain activities, none should tolerate the high
levels of improper payments currently associated with government
spending on social welfare programs. Federal spending has grown too
massive to be adequately overseen. Waste, fraud, and abuse
squanders public resources and undermines trust in
government. 

Keep that in mind the next time somebody tells you that Medicare
spends a fraction on administrative costs than private insurers do.
One of the main reasons is that nobody in the system has any
incentive to crack down on fraudulent or mistaken payments. Very
few companies could stay in business kicking out tens of billions
of dollars or more in wrong payments.

Read more here.

Last year, Reason TV looked at a new program designed to crack
down on overpayments at Medicare and Medicaid – and why the program
was doomed to failure. Watch that now: