It’s estimated that the U.S. Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services loses an estimated $60 billion in taxpayer funds every year to waste, fraud, and abuse. Well, as I’ve reported on more than one occasion, when it comes to government, there’s no oversight and no accountability.
In 2010, Medicare paid out over $35 million to a vast network of 118 phantom medical clinics, allegedly established by members of a criminal gang to submit phony reimbursement claims.
The clinics never existed anywhere but in paperwork. Prosecutors say the gang used stolen identities for dozens of doctors and over 2,000 patients to file over $100 million worth of phony claims via these clinics.
Since making arrests in October, the feds have been scrambling to recoup its money. When agents from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General examined more than 900 medical suppliers in California in 2007, they found that more than one in 10 of the companies were a fake – with no open, active physical location.
The Monkton, Vermont Conservation Commission received $150,000 in federal grant money to build a critter 
crossing, to save the lives of thousands of migrating salamanders and other amphibians that would otherwise be slaughtered by vehicle traffic on a major roadway.
I know I sleep better at night knowing that my hard earned money is being used so that salamanders can safely cross the road in Vermont. Don’t you?
