Art Levine: The GOP's Socialized Medicine: Corporate Drug Fraud

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from HuffPost:




Art Levine
The GOP's Socialized Medicine: Corporate Drug Fraud
Posted October 5, 2007 | 05:14 PM (EST)



While President Bush and his GOP allies are railing against the specter of socialized medicine and the high cost of the SCHIP program, the Bush administration has done relatively little to crack down on billions in corporate drug fraud that bilks our government health programs, as noted in my article this month in The American Prospect, "Medifraud Amok." These fraud schemes have led to $5 billion in settlements and fines in the last eight years, but expert say there are billions more that have been stolen by the drug industry -- but the Bush administration has allowed the industry to get away with fraudulent overcharges, destroyed prescriptions, resending returned drugs and other scams -- all while complaining that spending to insure lower-income kids ineligible for Medicaid is too expensive.

Meanwhile, a knowledgeable Justice Department official told me: "Starting in 2002 there was a conscious decision that the pendulum had swung too far towards health-care fraud enforcement. The investigative and regulatory agencies are less supportive of making the cases and more supportive of drug industry arguments."

Of course all the claims made by the GOP and Bush that the SCHIP program will primarily help families earning $83,000 a year and children who are already well-served by private insurance are a concoctions of lies, fabrications and exaggerated half-truths, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out. For starters, the $83,000 families would only be covered if an exemption is granted to one state, New York, that's made an application to extend such coverage as a way to cover moderate income children without health insurance, but hasn't won approval yet. I underscored these WMD-style whoppers in an article in In These Times: "In fact, the proposed expanded SCHIP program would primarily reach uninsured kids who are already eligible for either SCHIP or the even more restrictive Medicaid program. Indeed, currently nine out of ten of those now enrolled in SCHIP are in families that earn below 200 percent of the poverty line." (Here's a detailed debunking of the administration's SCHIP claims, based on the Senate bill that became the basis for the final legislation.)

But the administration has no problem in creating boondoggles for drug companies in exploiting Medicare and Medicaid that are the GOP's version of socialized medicine -- for drug industry CEOs. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/art-levine/the-gops-socialized-medi_b_67371.html