Thunderstorms, some heavy during the morning hours, then skies turning partly cloudy during the afternoon. High around 85F. Winds SSE at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of rain 100%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected..
Tonight
A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds SSE at 10 to 15 mph.
Taking care of my parents’ house and their affairs, including the mail. Dad’s been gone nearly seven months; mom, three years.
Got a statement the other day from Medicare; some outfit in Illinois had billed Medicare $120 to provide my mom with a COVID-19 vaccine shot. In April. Of 2023.
She’s been dead nearly three years. I don’t think the booster was going to help her much.
We didn’t get a bill, since Medicare covered the expense. But of course we paid, and so did you. Medicare is a government program, so in the end we all have to cough up the money for fraud.
I called a friend who knows a lot about the subject; he had been billed for, among other things, a catheter that he had no need for and, for that matter, never got. He recommended calling the fraud line, which I did. I also Googled the company, which is called Cipher Global, LLC; it has an “F” rating from the Better Business Bureau, which is probably all anybody needs to know.
This sort of boondoggle goes on to a mind-boggling degree. It’s something on the order of $60 billion per year that’s lost to fraud.
I haven’t given much thought to the question of how to stop it, and so I hesitate to offer any sort of recommendations. Stopping it would, I imagine, inevitably also make it tougher for Medicare recipients to get claims approved. There’s just inherently a tradeoff.
But one general concept does immediately jump to mind: How about NOT approving claims for services provided to people who’ve been dead a couple years?
Isn’t there a way for, say, Social Security to notify Medicare when somebody dies, so that a big red “DECEASED” appears on the screen when the fraudster company tries to collect for a COVID vaccine? The clerk at the Medicare office could at least get an alert not to click the “approve” button.