Health and Disability

All but two of the 37 health plans audited for 2007 were overpaid — typically several hundred thousand dollars too much.

NPR/Center For Public Integrity: Audits Of Some Medicare Advantage Plans Reveal Pervasive Overcharging
More than three dozen just-released audits reveal how some private Medicare plans overcharged the government for the majority of elderly patients they treated, often by overstating the severity of certain medical conditions, such as diabetes and depression. The Center for Public Integrity recently obtained, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, the federal audits of 37 Medicare Advantage programs. These audits have never before been made public, and though they reveal overpayments from 2007 — money that has since been paid back — many plans are still appealing the findings. (Schulte, 8/29)