Medicare Fraud Handled Fraudulently

Dear editor:

Interesting headline online, Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year, with a following story about overcharges, incorrect billing and out and out fraud. We have heard this type of reporting in the past and hear how the federal government is going to fix this problem and save the taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. Makes me want to ask, how are they going to do this?

Recently I received a Medicare Summary Report on my account and found that there was a charge, which the government and my secondary insurance carrier paid, for an emergency room visit in Orlando, FL. Knowing I had not been in Orlando in eleven years it was impossible for me to have seen the doctor shown on the report. In fact the date shown for the service I was at home in Lake Charles.

Since this was not the first time I saw charges such as this I called the Medicare Fraud Hotline and made a full report of the summary notice. Since there was no cost to me, the only reason for my reporting to the federal government was to help stop fraudulent charges. I was thanked and advised that it would be looked into.

In today’s mail I received a letter from Medicare advising that I would have to call up the doctor and emergency room advising them of their “mistake” and calling Medicare back with all kinds of information. .They would do nothing until I did all the investigating for them. Quite evidently this is how it is handled and when you multiply this nationwide by thousands a day the number is scary.

If this is how the federal government and Medicare are going to “control” fraud, those billions of dollars they want to save and use for new programs will never appear. No one administration is responsible for this lack of interest on the part of the federal departments and employees running this program but rather is endemic to a system that is completely ineffective and broken.

I myself am very happy with my Medicare coverage and would be lost without it. But, so many more people could have coverage with the money the government is flushing down the drain by ignoring reported fraud. If nothing is changed the headline of Healthcare system wastes up to $800 billion a year will grow year by year.

Celebrating Christopher Columbus

Dear editor:

Went to the post office this morning to mail a couple of packages and was surprised, lo and behold, it was closed for the Columbus Day Holiday. The state and local governments are open, the schools are open, the banks are open and all of the businesses in town are open. But the Post Office is closed with a paid holiday for its workers. You surely know the Post Office. That’s the place that is running up huge billion dollar deficits, much not of its own doing due to other methods of mail, that gives hundreds of millions of dollars of free mail to the U.S. Government and Congressmen and Senators that claim to be using it to keep in touch with their constituents when in reality they are running for office and keeping their name out there free of charge.

Yes, they are closed to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ voyage of discovery of the New World. Of course that sailor’s real desire was for reward, wealth, station and power. And what did he bring to the natives living there? Disease, subservience, and death. And so we celebrate.

Funny, but the Native Americans (North and South,) and Eskimos didn’t know they needed discovering. They were already here. And history tells us that the Vikings had “discovered” North America a long time before Columbus. And so we celebrate.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go there and they will be open to receive my small packages.