The House Democrats’ newest health care proposal includes a $250 million boost in funding over the next decade to combat health care fraud, waste and abuse.
On Thursday, the House Rules Committee posted the final text of the Democrats’ health care proposal. The 2310-page bill calls for a number of anti-fraud measures including increased oversight of payments made by government health care programs and harsher penalties for providers and suppliers who attempt to defraud the programs.
Among the oversight provisions are increase use of so-called bounty hunters to retrieve money spent on improper and fraudulent payments. President Barack Obama has discussed such efforts at recent rallies.
Democrats say that reining in waste, fraud and abuse will help reduce the deficit by $138 billion over the next ten years, and an additional $1.2 trillion during the following decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
“[It's] a tiny step in the right direction,” Jim Frogue of the Center for Health Transformation said. “There are more radical steps they could have taken…They could have done a lot more.”
