Doctors and health care facilities must cut cost, oftentimes resulting in closers of said facilities. A major negative aspect is the effect on the federal deficit. There are often expansions to Medicare without any congressional action or approval on how or where the funds come from to pay for these expansions. Therefore, the cost of these expansions gets added to the federal deficit, which in turn drives up taxes and the cost of medical care to privately insured individuals. Fraud and abuse are another concerning negative. The government processes an estimated 1.2 billion Medicare claims each year by a computer often not catching a fraudulent claim. The Government Accountability Office estimates that Medicare makes about $17 billion improper payments each year, many due to fraudulent or erroneous overpayments. Types of fraud include: billing by health care providers for services not rendered, billing for procedures not delivered, misrepresenting services, unbundling services that would normally be billed as one service, billing for unnecessary services, duplicate billing, and falsifying cost reports resulting in increased payment to health care
Doctors and health care facilities must cut cost, oftentimes resulting in closers of said facilities. A major negative aspect is the effect on the federal deficit. There are often expansions to Medicare without any congressional action or approval on how or where the funds come from to pay for these expansions. Therefore, the cost of these expansions gets added to the federal deficit, which in turn drives up taxes and the cost of medical care to privately insured individuals. Fraud and abuse are another concerning negative. The government processes an estimated 1.2 billion Medicare claims each year by a computer often not catching a fraudulent claim. The Government Accountability Office estimates that Medicare makes about $17 billion improper payments each year, many due to fraudulent or erroneous overpayments. Types of fraud include: billing by health care providers for services not rendered, billing for procedures not delivered, misrepresenting services, unbundling services that would normally be billed as one service, billing for unnecessary services, duplicate billing, and falsifying cost reports resulting in increased payment to health care