Cliff Stearns Calls Out Obama Administration on Medicaid Fraud

From his perch as the chairman of the Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee for the Energy and Commerce Committee, Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Cliff Stearns sent letters on Monday to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Kathleen Sebelius and Gene Dodaro, the comptroller general of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) demanding to know how much Medicaid and Medicare fraud costs taxpayers.

Earlier this month, I held a hearing examining waste, fraud, and abuse in the Medicare and Medicaid programs, said Stearns. Although some estimates for the cost of fraud in just Medicare ran from $60 billion to $90 billion a year, I wanted to hear the estimate from the witness from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).Mr. John Spiegel, director of Medicare Program Integrity for CMS, could offer no figure. It is very unsettling that the administration is unable to estimate the amount of fraud in a $600 billion program. How can we take effective steps in eliminating fraud when we dont know the extent of the problem?