“There is no kind of dishonesty into which otherwise good people more easily and frequently fall than that of defrauding the government.” – Benjamin Franklin
Some people apparently go into medicine for a chance to defraud the nation’s health care system.
On Monday, the Justice Department unveiled the results from its 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown. Here, federal and state agencies charged 324 people, including 96 licensed medical professionals, for allegedly filing $14.6 billion in bogus claims to Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers.
The Justice Department billed it as its “largest health care fraud takedown in history,” yet it is hardly a rounding error against the backdrop of about $5 trillion in annual health care expenditures nationwide.
This means there may not be as much fraud as advertised, or that a lot of fraudsters are really good and authorities can’t catch them.
Consider also that one big bust was accountable for about two-thirds of the $14.6 billion in fraud uncovered.
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