An article on MSNBC today has once again demonstrated the site's genius for pointing out the obvious in an article called "Florida is 'Ground Zero' for Healthcare Fraud."
That's almost as dumb as HomeCare Magazine's tendency to seek out Rob Brant and Barry Johnson for pearls of wisdom they're so obviously ill-equipped to provide.
MSNBC and NBC reporters seem to like doing stories about Medicare fraud in Florida. We all know about the fraud problems in that state; it's a mecca for retirees, so of course there will be more fraud there than, say, Wisconsin. Or Alaska. I think it's fair to say that where there are large number of beneficiaries, the chances that fraud will be committed increase.
It's useless to try to tell the press to use more current statistics, and it's pointless to tell them how our industry is being beaten up by competitive bidding and all the requirements we've been slapped with the last couple of years. The article zooms in on Miami, and rightfully so; Miami has long been notorious for Medicare fraud, and is probably responsible for a large part of the industry's awful reputation. Yes, other cities in other areas have contributed (Houston, for example), but Miami is king when it comes to fraud.
I'll probably get some complaints from Miami providers, but don't wait for an apology. Cliches exist for a reason, and where there's smoke there's fire. I don't know what the fraud stats are for Orlando, but I was completely unsurprised when Miami was in round one of competitive bidding. I think I might have been outraged if it hadn't been.
The article tells us that Medicare systems were set up and run on the assumption that those billing are honest; though the writer points out the flaws in agency staff, those billing are, of course, the bad guys of the story. What's wrong about that is that there are honest people who provide products and submit for reimbursement.
We know that back in the day, being in DME was lucrative, and business owners made a tidy sum from Medicare. But fraud isn't new, and it's taken CMS an incredibly long time to make changes that will enable them to fight the drain more effectively. If a company is billing for an unusual number of, say, left arm prosthetics, and it's not caught, then the system isn't run or policed well.
One the one hand, it's terrible that CMS seems to be able to evade responsibility for not doing more sooner. On the other hand, it's almost tragic that there are people out there actively looking for ways to beat the system and stick it to the taxpayer. The only thing wrong with assuming honesty is overlooking the fact that there's a lot of larceny out there.
Sometimes you can't appeal to a person's better nature because the person in question simply doesn't have a better nature. The entitlement mentality has taken a stranglehold on a huge portion of this country's population, and to those people, getting something for nothing is their right because they think it's owed to them.
When did that happen to us? My parents didn't raise me that way, and I didn't raise my children that way. I appear to be an exception rather than the rule; I can't go anywhere anymore without children running wild and their parents ignoring them or asking them to behave instead of making them act like people instead of animals. During the last twenty years, the trend in parenting has been to be "friends"' with your children instead of parents; we're told to not scar the little darlings by imposing punishment, and making them face consequences for their actions is a shocking idea anymore.
If the government thinks it's having a hard time with fraud now, I shudder to think of what's going to happen as the youngsters in this country come of age.
I'm not saying anything most of you haven't thought privately, but no one talks about it and no one does anything about it. And it's sad, because it's a symptom of the decline of our society and our country.
So there are more investigators on the streets now to combat the fraud problem. The people who go into business to commit fraud know the risks; they're sure they won't get caught, but they know the risks, and I'm guessing that the police don't frighten them because of the lure of a big (and unearned) payday.
It's important to catch the bad guys. But it's more important to fix the system that the bad guys target. CMS has wasted more than a decade doing nothing except pointing the finger at everyone else but the agency staff and agency subcontractors who know a problem exists but do nothing worthwhile to stop it.
I don't see competitive bidding as worthwhile. Deliberately depopulating an industry via a flawed program in the name of reducing fraud is ridiculous. I'm ignoring the "savings" associated with bidding because CMS has always been in control of reimbursement rates; if they wanted to save money, all they had to do was change the fee schedules.
The slant in fraud articles is painfully obvious. There is no more unbiased journalism anymore, and I'm tired of it. Reporters almost always fail to have any meaningful dialogue with anyone in the industry; our side of the story is almost never told. I don't want the press talking with anyone at AAHomecare or, worse yet, Rob Brant and (or) Barry Johnson (or anyone from that group), because they don't accurately or adequately represent DMEs (some of them are actually embarrassing). I don't want to read anymore vapid quotes from the usual suspects; we don't need trite, and we don't need to feed the egos of the hollow who look only to serve their own interests and further their own agendas.
I vaguely recall that AAHomecare had hired a PR firm not too long ago to improve the industry's image. I don't know how much that firm was paid, but I haven't seen a single positive result from that investment; it's yet another failure in a list of failures brought to us by AAHomecare. Our "voice in Washington," which has no credibility on the hill, can't even buy us a better image.
Epic fail, AAHomecare. Again.
I don't know what the answer is. But I'm frustrated, and very sick of being the victim of a smear campaign conducted by CMS and the press. Maybe I'll take action by contacting the MSNBC advertisers and telling them I'll boycott them if they continue to advertise on a site that runs stories that are half-true.
It's somewhere to start.
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