$60 Billion Theft

Ridiculous!

Officials said Medicare pilferage is so widespread, with so much of it never detected, that no one can accurately say how much it costs American taxpayers. But a figure widely used by law enforcement officials suggests a staggering $60 billion a year is stolen from the national entitlement program, which funds medical treatment, equipment and prescriptions for 45 million seniors and the disabled.

I'd rather we create jobs hiring people to better police Medicare, which would cut down on this theft in the long run ... than continue to let this happen without doing anything significant to prevent it. Say we spend $100 million (1/600th of the $60 billion in fraud) hiring people to combat this fraud. Say we set the average salary + benefits at $100,000 per person hired. That gives us a thousand people to track down these cases. Seems like that would get the job done, no?

Probably not.