The U.S. Government spent $1.3 trillion on Medicare in fiscal year 2020, making it by far the largest subfunction expenditure in the federal budget. If Medicare was a country, it would have approximately the same purchasing power as Australia. Crickey!
If you used dollar bills as carpeting, $1.3 trillion would cover Los Angeles, Jacksonville, Houston, Phoenix, Indianapolis, Louisville, Memphis, Kansas City, New York City, Charlotte, Chicago, Columbus, and Nashville, and you would still have some left over.
For all of this money, a lot of Americans do receive care. In 2019, an estimated 58 million individuals (18.1% of the U.S. population) were covered by Medicare. Additional government-funded healthcare programs expand coverage even more.
As of January 2021, almost 74 million individuals were enrolled in Medicaid and almost 7 million were enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Of these, almost half (over 38 million) were children. Health plans funded by the federal government, including Medicare, Medicaid, and Tricare, cover almost half of the U.S. population.
Virtually every family in America is touched by one of these programs. As a result, a fraud on any of these programs is a fraud on every one of us. In the coming days, we will be discussing some of the fraud on these programs, and the importance of whistleblowers in protecting the integrity of government-sponsored healthcare.
This article was originally posted as part of the “Fraud by the Numbers” series for the Fraud in America website by Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund, a public interest, non-profit organization dedicated to fighting fraud against the government by working to protect whistleblowers and strengthen whistleblower law.
About the author
Molly Beth Knobler has significant experience representing US and international whistleblowers in whistleblower protection and reward programs.
She has handled “qui tam” cases involving Medicare and Medicaid fraud, Stark violations, kickbacks in the healthcare industry, overcharging by government contractors, cybersecurity vulnerabilities in tech products, customs fraud and other types of fraud against the government.
She also represents clients in whistleblower claims with the IRS and the US Securities and Exchange Commission whistleblower programs, including cases involving violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a US anti-bribery law. has been recognized as a "Rising Star" for her work representing US and international whistleblowers.
Talia Mermin of Phillips & Cohen also contributed to this blog post.