Medicare Loses 4X $$ as Health Insurers Make

"In a newly released report, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made combined profits of $12.7 billion in 2010 (according to Fortune 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4.

"This is sobering news for the minority of Americans who (for some reason) continue to think that government-run health care is a model of efficiency and cost-effectiveness. Last year, total outlays for Medicare were $509 billion; therefore, Medicare spent nearly 10 percent of its outlays on fraudulent or improper claims. Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.” [...] (full article) [emphasis mine]