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BY MILA MIMICA

ANCHOR ZACH TOOMS

You're watching multisource health video news analysis from Newsy.

Investigators are saying thousands of Americans have abused the Medicare system and swindled prescription drugs.

Health Care Finance News says --

“A report form (sic) the Government Accountability Office found more than 170,000 instances of so-called ‘doctor shopping’ of 14 commonly abused prescription medications by Medicare Part D beneficiaries.”

Doctor shopping is the practice of obtaining the same prescription from multiple doctors. Baltimore’s WBAL explains.

“One medicare recipient in Georgia got prescriptions for 3,600 Oxycodone pills -- that’s more than a four years’ supply -- from 58 different prescribers.”

So, how much is all of this drug defrauding costing the American taxpayer? According to The International Business Times --

“The cost of these extraneous prescriptions amounted to $148 million in 2008. Taxpayers pay three-quarters of the cost of Medicare's prescription drug program, which covers approximately 28 million seniors and disabled individuals.”

Millions of lost dollars aside, The New York Times points out the health risks of prescription drug abuse.

“When told that one of his Medicare patients had received prescriptions for a 994-day supply of hydrocodone pills from 25 different prescribers in one year, a Texas doctor told investigators that ‘it was medically unnecessary and possibly dangerous to consume the amount of narcotics obtained by the beneficiary.’”

A blogger for The Hill reports the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Systems has acknowledged the system could use reforms, saying “We must shift our focus to overutilization of drugs”, but is defending the program and saying participants should be able to see more than one doctor or pharmacist.

“The GAO wants Medicare to go one step further and limit identified doctor-shoppers to one prescriber and one pharmacist. Blum pushed back against the idea, saying it could discriminate against people who “may have very legitimate healthcare needs”for seeing multiple specialists.”

Blum told the Healthcare Finance News 57,000 prescriptions for opiates were administered in 2010, in comparison to only 46,000 in 2007.


Transcript by Newsy.