The latest data drawn from federal records by the Transactional Records Access Records showed total prosecutions jumped 68.9 percent to 1,235 cases compared to 2010.Miami led the nation in activity, accounting for nearly one out of every nine health care fraud prosecutions, followed by Houston. Together, federal prosecutors in those two districts accounted for over one out of every five health care fraud prosecutions.
The huge increase was also fueled largely by a sharp jump in cases brought in Puerto Rico, where prosecutors charged 548 defendants with health care fraud last year, up from just 119 the previous year. Most of those were minor cases. But even without the Puerto Rican cases, fraud prosecutions nationwide were up sharply and reached the highest level since 2000.
Medicare could wrench as much as $70 billion a year in savings by cracking down on fraud, experts told Congress. But the key is preventing scam artists and fake firms from doing business with the senior citizen and health care programs in the first place – not chasing them down after the fact.
