U.S. Atty Gen to Ally Public and Private Healthcare Sectors in Anti-Fraud Fight

[This article posted on January 29, 2010. It is posted within the following categories: CMS, Corporate, Healthcare Policy & The Media, Politics & The Law, via Michael Douglas, MD, MBA.]

You know about the movie Avatar? Of course you do. It’s the new James Cameron movie which recently beat out that other Cameron flick Titanic to become the biggest worldwide and, shortly, domestic grossing film of all time — taking in a whopping $1.8B to date (almost $600M in the U.S.).

Now imagine the next Cameron vehicle surpassing Avatar by 33X. That’s the amount of public and private healthcare spending lost to fraud each year, according to remarks made by Atty. Gen. Eric Holder. Obama’s top lawyer was at the NIH yesterday pushing for a cabinet level commission designed to administer enforcements against healthcare fraud in both public and private sectors.

Will Congress listen? Just earlier this week, during his first SOTU address, Obama pledged a government spending freeze for three years — asking the legislature to pass a “pay as you go law” — requiring lawmakers to offset the cost incurred by the current tax cuts or incurred expenses due to programs like Medicare (which would be exempt from this law) with the increase in taxes. In essence, Obama would be keeping a ledger of the average budgetary effects of all legislation affecting mandatory spending.

According to Holder, public and private healthcare sectors need to embrace this new reality and the spending it will take to make it happen.

[O]ur ability to protect taxpayer dollars, to ensure the viability of our government health care programs, and to strengthen our national health care system depends on our ability to expand the discussion beyond the federal government…

LINK