Mr. Obama, in his second health care rally this week, said he was unleashing auditors around the country as part of a special program to ferret out government overpayments to hospitals and doctors, as well as to other contractors.
That's why, despite intense lobbying by the insurance industry, Congress inserted a provision in the Affordable Care Act to eventually phase out those overpayments.
"The Affordable Care Act strengthens Medicare's financing by increasing efforts to reduce waste, fraud and abuse; slowing the rate of increase in payments to providers; improving quality of care and phasing out overpayments to private Medicare Advantage plans, plans that are continuing to increase their enrollments each year.
In fact, most of those audited – 22 out of the 29 who retained their travel vouchers – received "overpayments" on their requested reimbursements at the casinos or adult-entertainment centers, totaling $8,544.
But money to measure overpayments on the earned-income tax credit survived.
It turns out, though, that those overpayments are not the only reason for MA insurers' healthy profits.
"You know what a large part of that $716 billion in savings turns out to be? Ending overpayments to the Medicare Advantage program.
As RiskMetrics points out, it could lead to overpayment for assets, fee structures that encourage big investments with lots of debt, and accounting policies that can exaggerate performance.
In 1983, Taylor fell out with Doe over allegations of overpayments by his agency to a New Jersey manufacturer.
"Yahoo's ludicrous overpayment for Broadcast.com gave Cuban the money to go out and buy the Dallas Mavericks basketball team and permanently implant himself on the American psyche," Mr. Nicholson wrote.
