Internet Sales Tax Legislation

If you oppose Internet Sales Tax Legislation, sign/send eBay letter at www.ebaymainstreet.com/action-center.

Medicare Fraud

In 2006 Medicare announced that only 7 percent of its payments were a result of fraud. Two years later, The New York Times reported that it was actually 31.5 percent. Do you think a privately run insurance company would take three years to notice that one-third of its payouts had been obtained by fraud? But with federal programs, there’s a powerful incentive not to look for fraud. That would merely vindicate critics of big government!

In 2012 Medicare investigators noticed that more than a billion dollars in home health care payments for 2008 had gone to one single county in Florida – more than all such payments made to the rest of the entire country. Do you think it would take five years for a private insurer to figure out it had been scammed out of $1 billion by a few health care professionals in one county? Wherever there’s a government program, there’s a gigantic opportunity for criminals.

In a recent press release the Department of Justice listed the following criminal convictions for Medicare and Medicaid fraud against the taxpayer in just a four-day period ending Nov. 7:

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Mehran Javidan, owner of Acure, a home health care company in Oak Park, Mich., was paid more than $2.2 million from Medicare based on fraudulent physical therapy files he submitted between December 2008 and November 2010.

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Javed Rehman, Tausif Rahman and Muhammad Ahmad – no relation to the Tsarneav brothers – fraudulently obtained Medicare beneficiary information to bill Medicare for home health services, swindling approximately $13.8 million from Medicare.

– Nov. 7, 2013:
Eliza Lozano Lumbreras, San Juanita Gallegos Lozano, Manuel Anthony Puig and Romelia Puig used their operation of the Mission Clinic and La Hacienda Family Clinic to submit false claims to Medicare and Medicaid, stealing approximately half a million dollars from the taxpayers between 2001 and 2006.

– Nov. 6, 2013:
Karen Kallen-Zury, Daisy Miller and Christian Coloma were convicted for receiving approximately $40 million from Medicare for patients not eligible for psychiatric treatment because they were not severely mentally ill.

– Nov. 6, 2013:
Jose Rojo, Antonio Macli, Jorge Macli and Sandra Huarte in Miami paid patient recruiters to refer ineligible Medicare beneficiaries to their clinic for services that were never provided. They were paid more than $11 million in fraudulent claims to Medicare.

– Nov. 4, 2013:
Godwin Umotong, Leslie Omagbemi, Munda Massaquoi, Comfort Gates, Ovsanna Agopian and Boghos Babadjanian were convicted of fraudulently billing Medicare of millions of dollars for office visits and diagnostic tests that were never performed, more than $1.3 million of which Medicare paid.

– Nov. 4, 2013:
William Dale Sidener was convicted of submitting fraudulent bills to Medicare and receiving $4,677.00 in payments for services not performed.

Given this abuse of Medicare/Medicaid, can you imagine what will happen with ObamaCare.

Government Programs

Government Ineptitude

The Washington Post reports that the federal employee retirement system paid more than $400 million in benefits over the past few years to deceased retirees. On the same page, we learn that despite the U.S. government’s $7 billion investment in combating heroin cultivation in Afghanistan, the trade is booming. Last week, the Brookings Institution published a study suggesting that Cash for Clunkers was a failure, costing taxpayers $1.4 million for each of the 3,676 jobs created.

Millions in Medicare to Deceased, Illegal Immigrants

The federal government has paid tens of millions of dollars in Medicare benefits to dead people and illegal immigrants, according to a pair of reports from federal watchdogs released on Thursday. The Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paid out $23 million to beneficiaries after their deaths in 2011, according to one report from HHS’ inspector general.

Another report tallied more than $28 million in payments from 2009 to 2011 to individuals who were in the country illegally. In all, CMS paid Medicare benefits to 4,139 illegal immigrants and 17,403 deceased people, according to the two reports. The two IG reports were the latest in the office’s ongoing investigation into the issue. Reports released in January found CMS had paid $125 million to illegal immigrants and prison inmates.