Tom Harkin: “for many years, I have worked to identify and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare Program. Senator Specter…”

“for many years, I have worked to identify and eliminate fraud, waste, and abuse in the Medicare Program. Senator Specter and I have held hearing after hearing and released report after report through our subcommittee. And along the way, we have had some successes. We've stopped a number of scams and ripoffs and we've forced Medicare to reduce excessive prices for a number of devices. These actions have saved Medicare and taxpayers over $1 billion. However, the problem continues to grow. Much more needs to be done. Several years ago, the General Accounting Office testified before our Appropriations Subcommittee that, based on their analysis, Medicare was losing up to 10 percent of its expenditures, or $16 billion to fraud, waste, and abuse. However, on July 17, HHS Inspector General June Gibbs Brown released a major new report that indicated that the problem was even worse. It was the first national audit of a statistically significant sample of Medicare claims for payment errors. This chief financial officer [CFO] audit found that up to 14 percent of Medicare payments in 1996 were made inappropriately. That's up to $24 billion in 1 year alone. And this was not a flimsy study. It was detailed and in-depth; 5,300 claims of all types--physician and hospital services, home health care, lab tests--were thoroughly audited. Patient medical records were reviewed and providers and beneficiaries were interviewed.”