Quick Hits:
- Medicare Overcharge: Health insurance companies overcharged the federal government by $50 billion through misleading diagnoses under Medicare Advantage programs.
- Fake Diagnoses for Profit: Insurers padded medical charts with fabricated illnesses like diabetic cataracts, often without patient treatment or doctor confirmation.
- Taxpayer Impact: Medicare Advantage spending now exceeds $450 billion, accounting for more than half of Medicare’s total cost—hitting taxpayers hard.
By Samuel A. Lopez, USA Herald
[USA Herald] – This latest revelation that private health insurance companies have overcharged Medicare by over $50 billion for exaggerated or fake illnesses is a shocking breach of trust.
Medicare Advantage, a program that was designed to offer seniors and disabled Americans better healthcare options through private insurers, has now turned into a costly burden for taxpayers. A Wall Street Journal investigation uncovered that private insurers inflated patient diagnoses to defraud the government for conditions patients either didn’t have or weren’t as severe as claimed. In essence, Medicare was swindled into paying for phantom ailments.
