The Acting Attorney General announced that 455 people are charged with taking 6.5 billion in health care fraud. It’s another spot where I have to put everything in numbers to be able to get my thoughts around it.
A billion has nine zeroes – so this translates to 455 people getting $6,500,000,000 – so if I round up to 500 thieves, that let’s me estimate that 5 crooks got 650,000,000 – so it’s somewhere on the close order of 130,000,000 – a hundred and thirty million dollars per crook.
This chart shows the increased billings for allografts:
Another hospice owner was busted for buying information from a funeral home employee to have real bodies to back up bills for taking care of the terminally ill. The funeral home klutz got from one thousand to three thousand dollars for supplying records from the deceased.
Here in north Lincoln County, we have a small population, with less opportunity for fraud. Our unethical growth industry seems to be embezzlement – usually from an organization that has management from a volunteer group, but the court records do show at least one embezzling from the post office. Still, embezzling usually occurs because a trusted employee gets into a spot where financial chicanery can happen, while in health care fraud, the crooks build a position, a framework if you will, where they can operate.
The problem is a matter of proportion – our local embezzlers are essentially cheapjacks, stealing fifty or a hundred thousand. This latest batch of healthcare fraudster have stolen 130 million per crook. To put this into proportion, Montana’s state budget is about 16.6 billion (44% comes from Federal funds). If we divide by a population (estimated at 1.14 million) – well, let’s simplify it – go down to one million, and take six zeroes away from 16,600,000,000 we come up with $16,600 per Montanan – go back and divide that by 1.14, we’re on the close order of $14,100 per Montanan.
We spend a lot of money on being governed. We’re probably lucky we don’t get all the government we pay for.
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