Report Shows How Taxpayers Subsidize Dealers, Pushers & Addicts

Nearly 7% of all Medicaid costs (more than $20 billion per year) is allocated to pay for prescription drugs, more than $63 million of which may have gone to feed the addictions of recreational drug users last year, according to a Government Accountabily Office (GAO) report publiched last month. The report examines a practice among drug abusers known as “doctor shoppping” where addicts purchase the same type of controlled substance from numerous different doctors during the same time period for their own use or for sale on the street — with the taxpayers picking up the tab through the State-administered Medicaid program (which recieves some $80+ billion in federal assistance annually). Additionally, the GAO report identified numerous other scams by which drugs paid for by Medicaid illegally make their way to the streets, including doctors overprescribing controlled substances, writing controlled substance prescriptions without DEA authorization, and prescriptions for over “1,800 beneficiaries who were dead at that time.” Read highlights of the GAO investigation or the the full 47-page September 9 GAO report.

To report Medicaid fraud, contact Frohsin & Barger.