President Obama and the newly appointed Congressional federal debt reduction committee will need to look under every rock to find ways to save money and do things differently.\u00a0 Now, they\u2019re getting some help from the private sector.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
In June, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services awarded a four-year $77 million contract to Northrop Grumman to develop a detection system capable of stopping fraud before it happens.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Based on systems used in the private sector to detect credit card fraud, the technology, known as predictive modeling, will help identify fraudulent claims before they\u2019re paid.\u00a0 This is a major improvement over current efforts that often depend on a tipster making a phone call long after millions in bogus claims have been paid.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cA decade ago, bringing down a fraud scheme usually started with a tip from an informant,\u201d noted Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.\u00a0 \u201cBut with more than four and a half million claims being paid out every working day from Medicare alone, we can\u2019t afford to sit around and wait for tips to come in.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we\u2019re turning to state-of-the-art analytic technology to help predict and identify fraudulent claims as soon as they are submitted, so we can stop payments before they\u2019re out the door.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The stakes are enormously high, as the massive Medicare and Medicaid programs have become targets of professional thieves.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
According to The New York Times last October, a \u201cband of Armenian-American gangsters\u201d billed Medicare for more than \u201c$100 million by inventing 118 bogus health clinics in 25 states.\u201d The gangsters made off with $35 million in cash that cannot be recovered. That\u2019s $35 million in tax money that won\u2019t be available to pay for our grandparents\u2019 medications or treatment.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n