[nfbmi-talk] drugs and closures for the dead...what's the dif?

Terry D. Eagle terrydeagle at yahoo.com
Sat Nov 1 03:15:32 UTC 2014


That would be really funny were it not so true bureaucracy waste.  It said
they are working on a "FIX".  I bet those taxpayer-paid addicts and thugs
are!  But not the fix needed to the program and taxpayers.  This must be the
beyond death drug venefit plan for family, friends, lovers, and lovers of
lovers, just like their affirmative action employment hiring program. 

-----Original Message-----
From: nfbmi-talk [mailto:nfbmi-talk-bounces at nfbnet.org] On Behalf Of joe
harcz Comcast via nfbmi-talk
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2014 8:28 PM
To: nfbmi-talk at nfbnet.org
Subject: [nfbmi-talk] drugs and closures for the dead...what's the dif?

And BSBP counts dead people as closures. 



(Is that hard to believe after reading this?)

 

Watchdog: Medicare bought medications for dead people Washington Call it
drugs for the departed: Medicare's prescription program kept paying for
costly

medications even after patients were dead. The problem was traced back to a
head-scratching bureaucratic rule that's now getting a second look. A report

coming out Friday from the Health and Human Services Department's inspector
general says the Medicare rule allows payment for prescriptions filled up to

32 days after a patient's death at odds with the program's basic principles,
not to mention common sense. "Drugs for deceased beneficiaries are clearly

not medically indicated, which is a requirement for (Medicare) coverage,"
the IG report said. It urged immediate changes to eliminate or restrict the
payment

policy. Medicare said it's working on a fix. Investigators examined claims
from 2012 for a tiny sliver of Medicare drugs medications to treat HIV, the

virus that causes AIDS and then cross-referenced them with death records.
They found that the program paid for drugs for 158 beneficiaries after they
were

already dead. The cost to taxpayers: $292,381, an average of $1,850 for each
beneficiary. Medicare's "current practices allowed most of these payments

to occur," the report said. Of 348 prescriptions dispensed for the dead
beneficiaries, nearly half were filled more than a week after the patient
died.

Sometimes multiple prescriptions were filled on behalf of a single dead
person. Investigators don't know what happened to the medications obtained
on behalf

of dead people, but some may have been diverted to the underground market
for prescription medicines. The report said HIV drugs can be targets for
fraud

since they can be very expensive; one common HIV drug costs about $1,700 for
a month's supply, it said. Medicare is the government's premier health
insurance

program, providing coverage to about 55 million seniors and disabled people.
Prescription coverage delivered through private insurance plans began in
2006

as a major expansion of the program. But it's also been a target for scams.
The report did not estimate the potential financial impact across the $85
billion-a-year

Medicare prescription program known as Part D. But investigators believe the
waste may add up to millions of dollars. "The exposure for the entire Part

D program could be significant," said Miriam Anderson, team leader on the
report. "The payment policy is the same for all drugs, whether they are
$2,000

drugs to treat HIV or $4 generic drugs. In a formal response, Medicare
agreed with the investigators' recommendations. "After reviewing this
report, (Medicare)

has had preliminary discussions with the industry to revisit the need for a
32-day window," wrote Marilyn Tavenner, the Obama administration's Medicare

chief. Medicare had originally maintained that the date of service listed in
the billing records could instead reflect when a pharmacy submitted bills

for payment. That billing date might have actually occurred after a
prescription was filled, since some nursing home and institutional
pharmacies submit

their bills in monthly bundles. However, the inspector general's
investigators found that about 80 percent of the prescriptions for dead
beneficiaries

were filled at neighborhood pharmacies, undercutting Medicare's first
explanation. As for the remainder, the investigators said they didn't see
any reason

pharmacies can't report an accurate date of service. Investigators said they
stumbled on the problem during an examination of coverage for AIDS drugs
dispensed

to Medicare beneficiaries. Sexually transmitted diseases are an increasingly
recognized problem among older people. That earlier investigation raised
questions

about expensive medications billed on behalf of nearly 1,600 Medicare
recipients. Some had no HIV diagnosis in their records, but they were
prescribed

the drugs anyway. Others were receiving excessively large supplies of
medications. Several were getting prescriptions filled from an unusually
large number

of pharmacies. Prescription drug fraud has many angles. When the high price
of a drug puts it out of reach for certain patients, it can create an
underground

market. And some medications, like painkillers and anti-anxiety pills, are
constantly sought after by people with substance-abuse issues. Copyright
2014

The Associated Press. 
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