Medicare Fraud Posse Cackles as If They Laid an Asteroid

What the media blare:

Levinson Snags $515 Million in Health Care Fraud

More than 100 Charged in Massive Medicare Fraud Busts in 7 Cities in Scams Totaling $452 Mil

What I hear:

Drip . . . . . . . . . . drip . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Why? As the latter article notes, “authorities have targeted fraud that’s believed to cost the government between $60 billion and $90 billion each year.” So add up those two figures, which include frauds that occurred in multiple years, and you get somewhere between 1.1 percent and 1.6 percent of the amount that Medicare and Medicaid enable criminals to steal from taxpayers in a single year.

Neither article makes it clear how paltry these anti-fraud efforts are. But at least the former article asks:

So what is it about the government’s health care programs that make them such inviting targets for white collar criminals?

I answer that question here, and in this video: