Insurers overcharged Medicare for prescriptions, report finds

[cal04]

David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/61200.html

If you buy medicine through Medicare's prescription drug program, you could be paying too much.

The taxpayers who finance Medicare aren't doing too well, either.

Insurance companies involved in the Medicare prescription drug benefit have overcharged subscribers and taxpayers by several billion dollars, according to the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services . Eighty percent of the participating insurance companies owe the program an estimated $4.4 billion for 2006 alone.

Medicare , however, has been slow to do something about it. In fact, the agency doesn't even know how much money the insurance companies owe taxpayers because it hasn't begun most of the financial audits needed to determine that.

"It shows a mindset that could care less about wasting taxpayer money, that has no problem with padding profits of drug companies with hard-earned taxpayer dollars," said Sen. Claire McCaskill , a Missouri Democrat.

McCaskill, a former state auditor, has asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services , which administers the program, to explain why so many audits haven't been done and how it plans to collect the $4.4 billion .

[KharmaTrain]

1. Yet Another Booooosh Mess To Clean Up

This was a given when DeLay held the votes open and twisted arms to get the obscene Prescription Drug bill passed. It all but gave the insurance companies total control over the plan and let big Pharma charge what they saw fit...both ends making big bucks at the tax payer's expense.

It's amazing how repugnicans scream about "government waste" except when it goes to their pets. Single payer and a government run health program would save billions in sqaundered tax payer dollars.

[rurallib]

2. Who could have seen that coming?

Privatized and overcharged seem to go together.

[Libertyfirst]

3. Sen. McCaskill is proving to be one hell of a Senator. She is calling

for investigations, corrections, and jail sentences. If we had a dozen like her the senate would actually be doing something. She is trying big time to clean up the mess * left behind.