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Comment by balderdash | Hacker News Reader

The social security administration estimates ~$60b a year in fraud on ~$400b budget! [1] [2]. People can have a rational discussion as to where and how fraud and abuse are rooted out, but I have trouble understanding how people don’t think it’s an issue?

[1] https://blog.ssa.gov/medicare-fraud-prevention-week/ [2] https://www.usaspending.gov/explorer/budget_function

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The problem is that the real perpetrators of the fraud are just trying to redirect the blame to regular citizens. The biggest source of fraud is the insurance and hospital industry itself. See the example of Rick Scott: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Scott, yes, that Rick Scott- current Senator from Florida.

> Scott was pressured to resign as chief executive of Columbia/HCA in 1997. During his tenure as chief executive, the company defrauded Medicare, Medicaid, and other federal programs. The U.S. Department of Justice won 14 felony convictions against the company, which was fined $1.7 billion in what was at the time the largest healthcare fraud settlement in U.S. history.

THIS. I had to search this thread for Rick Scott. The sources of real fraud are promoted by Trump and Musk.

https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1855702328571253103

See my third point. :)

Article from 2022: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/upshot/medicare-advantage...

In short, yes there's fraud, yes it's a problem, and the biggest offenders are probably insurance companies. This shouldn't surprise anyone who has dealt with the US health insurance scam, er, I mean system.

P.S. To clarify for others who may not bother to click into the links, the parent post mentions the social security administration but the numbers and sources are specifically referring to Medicare, which is what I'm responding to.

Medicare would not include SSN payments, though? With a quick search showing Medicare will have a trillion dollar budget. Feels like you are picking incompatible numbers to exaggerate a point.

Fraud is also tough, as it is an optimization problem. You want the amount of fraud to be less than what it would cost to fight it more. Especially since a lot of mistakes are labeled as a type of fraud.

The Medicare budget in 2023 was $830 billion [0]. Where are you getting $400B from?

[0] https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/what-to-know-about-...

It is an issue and should be addressed. But it should be fixed, not burnt to the ground.

Indeed. In fact, one couldn't be blamed for thinking that perhaps all of this is about something else entirely.

> In fact, one couldn't be blamed for thinking that perhaps all of this is about something else entirely.

Indeed. They've been quite explicit in their goals.

You linked to a blog post about Medicare fraud, not Social Security fraud.

That's because the original responder's data was about medicare fraud although the estimate was provided by the Social Security Administration

But they explicitly said $400B which is not medicare's budget, but rather social security's budget

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