The large Medical Insurance companies the NY Times reports have game the government for BILLIONS of dollars of profits for excess services….
The conclusion to the piece aludes to the parties involved , including the government , KNOW how the fix the situation, which in the end costs taxpayers, but won’t…
It involves too much money going to to too many places….
A New York Times review of dozens of fraud lawsuits, inspector general audits and investigations by watchdogs shows how major health insurers exploited the program to inflate their profits by billions of dollars.
The government pays Medicare Advantage insurers a set amount for each person who enrolls, with higher rates for sicker patients. And the insurers, among the largest and most prosperous American companies, have developed elaborate systems to make their patients appear as sick as possible, often without providing additional treatment, according to the lawsuits.
As a result, a program devised to help lower health care spending has instead become substantially more costly than the traditional government program it was meant to improve.
Eight of the 10 biggest Medicare Advantage insurers — representing more than two-thirds of the market — have submitted inflated bills, according to the federal audits. And four of the five largest players — UnitedHealth, Humana, Elevance and Kaiser — have faced federal lawsuits alleging that efforts to overdiagnose their customers crossed the line into fraud.
The fifth company, CVS Health, which owns Aetna, told investorsits practices were being investigated by the Department of Justice.
In statements, most of the insurers disputed the allegations in the lawsuits and said the federal audits were flawed. They said their aim in documenting more conditions was to improve care by accurately describing their patients’ health.
Many of the accusations reflect missing documentation rather than any willful attempt to inflate diagnoses, said Mark Hamelburg, an executive at AHIP, an industry trade group. “Professionals can look at the same medical record in different ways,” he said.
The government now spends nearly as much on Medicare Advantage’s 29 million beneficiaries as on the Army and Navycombined. It’s enough money that even a small increase in the average patient’s bill adds up: The additional diagnoses led to $12 billion in overpayments in 2020, according to an estimate from the group that advises Medicare on payment policies — enough to cover hearing and vision care for every American over 65.
Another estimate, from a former top government health official, suggested the overpayments in 2020 were double that, more than $25 billion….
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The Justice Department has brought or joined 12 of the 21 cases that have been made public. But whistle-blower cases remain secret until the department has evaluated them. “We’re aware of other cases that are under seal,” said Mary Inman, a partner at the firm Constantine Cannon, which represents many of the whistle-blowers.
But few analysts expect major legislative or regulatory changes to the program.
“Medicare Advantage overpayments are a political third rail,” said Dr. Richard Gilfillan, a former hospital and insurance executive and a former top regulator at Medicare, in an email. “The big health care plans know it’s wrong, and they know how to fix it, but they’re making too much money to stop. Their C.E.O.s should come to the table with Medicare as they did for the Affordable Care Act, end the coding frenzy, and let providers focus on better care, not more dollars for plans.”…