Government to expand audit program to fight waste, fraud
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The government will increase the use of audits that compensate those who uncover waste and fraud, the Obama administration announced Wednesday.
The technique, known as payment recapture audits, will be used on variety of programs, but especially Medicare and Medicaid. President Obama will explain the expansion during a visit to St. Louis, where he will campaign for his healthcare overhaul plans.
Payment recapture audits are investigations by private-sector auditors who seek to reclaim taxpayer dollars paid out in error or gained through fraud, the White House said. The auditors can be compensated based on the amount of improper payments they recover.
A pilot Medicare project in California, New York, and Texas recovered $900 million from 2005 to 2008, the White House said. The government is hoping to recoup $2 billion in the next three years.
The White House was framing Obama’s announcement on expanding the recapture program as an effort to embrace Republican healthcare ideas as way of winning bipartisan support his overhaul plans.
Obama will also announce his support for pending legislation to expand the ability of government agencies to fund the audits with recaptured payments.
“The fact is, Washington is a place where tax dollars are often treated like Monopoly money, bartered and traded, divvied up among lobbyists and special interests. And it has been a place where waste – even billions of dollars in waste – is accepted as the price of doing business,” Obama said in remarks prepared for his St. Louis appearance. “Well, I don’t accept business as usual. And the American people don’t accept it either, especially when one of the most pressing challenges we face is reining in long-term deficits which threaten to leave our children a mountain of debt.”
-- Michael Muskal
Twitter.com/LATimesmuskal
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