The United States healthcare industry is losing billions of dollars from healthcare fraud.
Here are 10 things to know:
1. Medicaid spends $415 billion annually.
2. Medicare spends approximately $600 billion each year.
3. Total health spending in the United States amounts to a staggering $2.7 trillion.
4. Donald Berwick, MD, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and Andrew Hackbarth of RAND, estimated fraud added $98 billion to annual Medicare and Medicaid spending.
5. Fraud also accounted for an additional $272 billion in spending across the entire health system.
6. Officials in LA discovered a physician who collected $23 million for 1,000 power wheelchairs and equipments his patients didn't need.
7. The United States Justice Departments have charged 243 people totaling $712 million in false billings to Medicare and Medicaid after conducting an eight year long campaign.
8. Healthcare fraud is not localized in one area, but is a national problem occurring in major cities across the United States.
9. A Miami healthcare official carried out a $205 million scam. He was later sentenced to 50 years in jail.
10. The federal government implemented a "strike force" that charged 2,300 people for scams worth $7 billion.
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