That’s not unusual for federal investigators dealing with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the section of the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees Medicare and made $60 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2014.
That $60 billion accounted for more than 10 percent of everything spent on health care services by the federal government in 2014, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Federal investigators also found officials failed to remove 147 physicians who failed to tell CMS that they had been found guilty by a state medical board of criminal activity. It took CMS months longer than it should have to remove some of those doctors from the system, and CMS “never removed” others, the GAO found.