Grassley demands answers on recent Medicare fraud prevention investments

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The Hill:

The top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee wants the federal government to explain why the conviction rate for Medicare fraud is largely flat despite the millions recently spent to beef it up.

The Democratic Congress appropriated $198 million in discretionary funds for Medicare fraud prevention last year, on top of an $11 million increase in mandatory spending. But the number of criminal convictions fell slightly that year (from 588 to 583), prompting Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) to demand some answers in a letter he sent to the heads of the Health and Human Services and Justice departments.

The letter also points out that the total number of defendants in 2009, 803, only represents an increase of six defendants over 2008 and 17 over 2007 numbers. And the number of new criminal cases filed dropped in 2009, from 502 to 481.

"The decline in criminal cases filed," Grassley wrote, "the stagnant number of criminal defendants, and the low level of actual convictions raise serious questions about how DOJ and HHS are allocating resources to combat criminal health care fraud."