Idle musings...
Sep. 12th, 2009 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexpgpIn his speech the other night, the President echoed sentiments expressed by at least a half-dozen of his predecessors, suggesting that huge amounts of money could/would/should be recovered by eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" in Medicare, which a few minutes of Googling suggests to be about $60 billion annually (according to the Senate's Special Committee on Aging).
Knowing the propensity of politicians to express vaguely appealing sentiments in public whenever their lips move, I conclude that ultimately, no matter what, no matter who is in power, it is the very nature of Medicare to "accept" some degree of ongoing overhead due to fraud.
This leads me to wonder: What percentage loss to ongoing fraud and abuse is "acceptable" in the private sector? (By "acceptable" I mean fraud/abuse/etc. that's going to happen despite reasonable best efforts to prevent it.)
Cheers...
Knowing the propensity of politicians to express vaguely appealing sentiments in public whenever their lips move, I conclude that ultimately, no matter what, no matter who is in power, it is the very nature of Medicare to "accept" some degree of ongoing overhead due to fraud.
This leads me to wonder: What percentage loss to ongoing fraud and abuse is "acceptable" in the private sector? (By "acceptable" I mean fraud/abuse/etc. that's going to happen despite reasonable best efforts to prevent it.)
Cheers...
