Medicare paid $23 million for dead patients in 2011 and $29 million for drug benefits for illegal immigrants from 2009 to 2011, according to a report Thursday from the Health and Human Services inspector general.
The investigators said Medicare has safeguards to try to stop payments to dead patients, but it still ended up sending out the $23 million anyway.The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) — the same agency that is struggling to fix the broken Obamacare website — acknowledged the problems and said it will try to take steps to fix them.
“We agree that in cases where the information indicates an individual is not lawfully present in the United States, that individual should not be permitted to enroll or to remain enrolled in a Part D plan during the period where he or she is not eligible to receive federal benefits,” Marilyn Tavenner, administrator of CMS, said in response to the report about illegal immigrants getting benefits.
The payouts aren’t large — they amount to just a fraction of a percent of what Medicare pays each year in benefits. Still, the investigators said the agency should take steps to crack down. In one of its reports the inspector general said 4,139 illegal immigrants were able to make 279,056 drug benefit claims.
The investigators said that while CMS has policies to prevent illegal immigrants from getting most Medicare benefits, it didn’t have such a policy for the prescription drug program, which was added under President George W. Bush and expanded by President Obama’s health law.
As for dead patients collecting benefits, the investigators said the problems were often related to missing or incorrect dates of death. Dead doctors also were paid $25 million over a three-year period.Read more:
Here we go with another headline that insults my intelligence and it should everyone else's that knew WTF was going on and has been going on forever, just no one wanted to look or was so caught us in trivial mainstream BULLSHIT. Payments to illegal immigrants, refugees, dead people, or dead people voting has been going on for a long long time.
I am in NO WAY defending Obama, just pointing out truthful facts that have always been out there it seemed no one cared to look at what we have been trying to say calling us crazy racists when we tried pointing it out or take the time to do a little digging and research on your own, not by taking the easy way out listening to some over paid radio personality.
Learn the true history of things and not just from one side. It's out there and the truth is painful as hell! I'm also not trying to point fingers at people calling them stupid, it is all a learning process.
Although; I will call those that basically reiterate word for word what was told to them on the radio by their favorite radio personality sheep too, if they just want to stick to what was told to them without further looking into events and act like they know it all.
I won't lie; I used to listen/watch Glen Beck until he developed a 'GOD' like complex, The difference I always dug deeper into what he was saying, beyond even what I have posted here and else where. I'm also not trying to come off like I'm better then anyone, that's just my thought on it. jlh~
How Much Do Illegal Immigrants REALLY Cost the United States?
February 11, 2009 by Bob Livingston A report by the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) cited several interesting statistics based on census data. Some of these facts may be familiar to long-time readers… but I wanted each of you to know the enormous costs placed on the United States…Our government continues to claim that the war on terror is bankrupting us. But what about these numbers? You do the math…
- $11 billion to $22 billion is spent on welfare to illegal aliens each year by state governments.
- Illegal households only pay about one-third the amount of federal taxes that non-illegal households pay.
- Illegal households create a net fiscal deficit at the federal level of more than $10 billion a year. If given amnesty, this number could grow to more than $29 billion.
- $1.9 billion dollars a year is spent on food-assistance programs such as food stamps, WIC and free school lunches for illegal aliens.
Nixon’s Gift to Immigrants
Another huge whopper in this e-mail is the claim that President Jimmy Carter and the Democratic Party "decided to start giving annuity payments to immigrants … even though they never paid a dime into it." In truth, no illegal immigrant is allowed to get a penny of Social Security retirement benefits, as this message implies. (We address more false claims on that theme in another Ask FactCheck.) And any immigrant who has become a citizen or legal resident can qualify only to the extent that they have worked and paid into the system for years, on the same basis as everybody else.
The earlier version of this e-mail made this claim only about the SSI program – the Supplemental Security Income program for the blind, disabled or elderly and destitute. But the truth is, that program was signed into law by Republican President Richard Nixon in 1972. Under Nixon’s SSI law, legal immigrants were eligible for benefits from the start. It is a federal welfare program funded out of general tax revenues and is separate from the Social Security old-age pensions and disability insurance programs funded out of dedicated payroll taxes. While Social Security benefits are paid to those who have paid payroll taxes for a certain minimum period of time, SSI benefits were available to all – citizens and legal residents alike – regardless of whether they had "paid a dime into it" or not.
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