Airdate 10/25/09  U.S. taxpayers are being charged for an arm and a leg – prosthetics, that is, and thousands of them – as part of a huge Medicaid and Medicare billing scam that’s siphoning off an estimated $90 billion a year. In South Florida, Medicare fraud has pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise. The problem is so serious that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has organized a federal strike force. Steve Kroft reports.This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com’s standard return policy will apply.

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It is estimated that five out of ten people turning 67 will use a nursing home at some point in their lives and many will need home care and other related services as well About two-thirds of people in nursing homes have no living relatives. And about 70 percent of all nursing home patients are women. Nursing home costs are estimated to be $75,000 in 2009, which would economically devastate most families. The federal government will not be helping either, unless you are without any assets, Medicare will cover you for a maximum of 100 days, but there are no social security benefits to cover any of these expenses. The only program that can assist you is Medicaid, but the catch is you must qualify. You can protect yourself from Medicaid nursing home costs by taking action now while you still have your health; the key is in the planning, which this new, groundbreaking book will assist you with. On February 8, 2006, President Bush signed a law called the Deficit Reduction A (more…)

Let’s say you’re the devil, and you want to corrupt the American republic. How would you go about it? According to David Hyman, you might create something like Medicare, the federal health care program for the elderly. Hyman submits that Medicare may be the greatest trick the devil ever played. Medicare feeds on the avarice of doctors and other providers, turns seniors into health care gluttons, and makes regions of the United States green with envy over the dollars showered on other regions. The program exploits the sloth of government officials to increase the tax burden on workers and drag down the quality of care for seniors. Medicare makes Democrats lust for socialized medicine, while its imperviousness to reform makes Republicans angrier and angrier. Most of all, Medicare allows its ideological supporters to bleat and preen their way to the heights of moral vanity. In the style of C.S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, Hyman writes that Medicare has freed the self-in (more…)

Review

“This book combines in-depth personal interviews, historical data, and legislative records in an insightful case study of Medicare. The 50-year history of this program is enlivened by a search for patterns based on theories from political science. . . . The book also explores new theories of path dependence and the roles of ideas in public policy in the US.” (Choice )”A brilliant little book, combining a grasp of programmatic and political detail sure to appeal to scholars of health policy with crisp prose and careful argument accessible to policymakers and most of Medicare’s beneficiaries. . . . Oberlander’s analysis is organized around three persistent tensions in Medicare politics: the gap between the program’s promise and its performance; the fiscal and administrative tug-of-war between private provision and public payment; and the political and actuarial dilemma of delivering `service’ benefits on a foundation of social insurance financing. . . . The meat (more…)