The facts and figures presented by CBS’s Steve Kroft were disturbing as were the details concerning how shysters bilk the system for an estimated $60 billion a year.
Reader’s Digest ran a similar story in the October 2009 issue. Unfortunately, after running off many atrocious examples of criminals bilking the system (and taxpayers) of billions of dollars, Michael Crowley completely misses the core issue by concluding:
The Justice Department and HHS have finally stepped up efforts to crack down on such abuse. Since last October, they’ve won 300 convictions and recovered nearly $1 billion. But most watchdogs agree that’s just a start. More funding and investigators are needed.
New laws and regulations are needed too.
What new laws and regulations could possibly be needed? Is fraud not yet illegal? Is it not yet illegal to steal from taxpayers and the government? How about identity theft? Filing false paperwork? Every example cited in both the Reader’s Digest and 60 Minutes stories was of something that’s already illegal. And yet, government eternally uses their failure as justification for more power and funding.
The 60 Minutes story got closest to the core problem:
Later, Kroft asked Waterman, “There’s something I don’t understand. I mean, you’re saying essentially people just fill out the phony paperwork, they send a bill to Medicare and they pay it.”
That is the most obvious symptom of the problem. The government does not provide any services. They never see patients. All they do is pay people for submitting paperwork. Anyone who can submit paperwork can receive money in exchange.
And these people claim they can somehow save enough money by refining the current system to pay for their entirely government-run system. I say they are crazy liars.
Now, you’ll notice I said that is a symptom. This is the core problem with Medicare and Medicaid:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The real problem, the core fraud, is the hundreds of billions of dollars the feds are fraudulently stealing from the entire nation by maintaining these unconstitutional programs. There is no constitutional justification for their existence, and yet, on a scale that makes the criminals they are prosecuting drool with envy, the thieves in Congress fill out the phony paperwork, send the bill to the taxpayers, and steal hundreds of billions of dollars from the productive members of this great nation.
