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Are poor Medicare recipients drug addicts, or are they selling their drugs on the street?  The stereotype out of the Government Acocunting Office says they are addicts defrauding the government.  Looking at the same study with an open mind, I think it’s just as easy to say they are trying to make ends meet by buying and selling drugs, just like most of the other residents of ghettos and barrios where the 99% live:

In 600 cases revealed in the audit, Medicare beneficiaries received prescriptions from as many as 87 different doctors in the same year indicating, the report said, that the patients shopped around to find as many providers as possible to write prescriptions for drugs in those 14 categories — mostly controlled substances and primarily hydrocodone and oxycodone.

“In these situations, there is heightened concern that these Medicare beneficiaries may be seeking several medical practitioners to support and disguise an addiction,” Kutz told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Managment, Government Information, Federal Services and International Security on Tuesday.

The people who received multiple prescriptions accounted for $148 million in loss to Medicare, according to the Government Accounting Office, which conducted the audit. GAO believes that most of the “doctor shoppers,” who are disabled or elderly, are addicted to the drugs they’re buying.

I would like to challenge GAO: I would bet otherwise. I bet they are selling their excess drugs on the street to get money to live on. In this nation of haves and have-nots, Medicare is one of the last remaining sources of safety.

I looked this up on the internet. Here’s what Yahoo Answers says is the prevailing rate for oxycontin on the street: “usually the cardinal rule for all recreational pills is a buck a milligram.” In Palm Beach County Florida, where many elderly people live, recreational pain killers go for $8-$10 a pill.

Before we assume the Medicare beneficiaries themselves are the addicts, let’s look at who they are:

One barrier to spotting fraud among Medicare beneficiaries with low incomes is that they are a special group that can switch Medicare plans monthly, making it difficult to spot excessive prescriptions or excessive visits to the doctor, Kutz noted. Traditional Medicare beneficiaries can only switch Medicare plans once a year.

Doesn’t it make more sense that these people, who probably lack other necessities in life, have put their disabilities to work for them in the only way they can — to use them to procure drugs and re-sell them on the street. Of course looking at it that way would mean taking a systemic view of poverty, disability, social problems, and drug addiction. Prescription drug addiction is just as prevalent among the rich as among the poor, only the rich can afford to pay the $10 a pill.

We knew it all along. One third of the dollars spent on health care are wasted, and 22% of that waste is outright Medicare fraud. I don’t know if you saw 60 Minutes last night, but there was an incredible segment on Medicare fraud that said it’s now bigger than drug cartels in Miami, because it’s so much easier. No one shoots you; you just have to rent an office, put a sign up, buy some lists of Medicare patients, and start producing invoices.

Medicare is legally bound to pay within 30 days (they reimbursed me for my mammorgram before I even had the results), so these businesses only need to stay in business about 60 days to cheat Medicare out of $20 million. They order prostethic limbs for patients (sometimes they order two arms and a leg on the same invoice) and charge it to a patient who receives an Explanation of Benefits he doesn’t understand. By the time he tells Medicare and they get an inspector out, the office has closed down, the people are gone, and Medicare’s the loser.

I was stunned watching that last night. And then I read this study today. Reported by veteran health and science reporter Maggie Fox, is says that a full one third of our health care expenditures are wasted, and details where and how.

Unsurprisingly, 6% of the waste is due to paper records and the failure of communications that results from health care’s lack of automation. And protection from malpractice, which means overuse of antibiotics and useless testing is another 37% of the waste.

But the most important realization is that these add up to BILLIONS of dollars a year, just as Obama said. We can pay for health care reform by reforming our spending habits.

Here are some more highlights, but go read the entire piece.
Fraud makes up 22 percent of healthcare waste, or up to $200 billion a year in fraudulent Medicare claims, kickbacks for referrals for unnecessary services and other scams.

* Administrative inefficiency and redundant paperwork account for 18 percent of healthcare waste.

* Medical mistakes account for $50 billion to $100 billion in unnecessary spending each year, or 11 percent of the total.

* Preventable conditions such as uncontrolled diabetes cost $30 billion to $50 billion a year.