Medicare's penal code: $240 million in taxpayer dollars spent on penis pumps

Senior center, Skokie, IL

Your taxpayer dollars at play! The Heartlander blog informs us that $240 million of taxpayer funds have been spent on penis pumps for elderly men by Medicare since 2001.

One fraudster scored big, thanks to our government.

One area of concern for CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] is the rise in fraud in relation to the pump devices. Earlier this year an Illinois man pled guilty to collecting more than $2 million from Medicare in a fraudulent operation where he repackaged $26 items from adult websites and sold them to seniors as medical devices, charging Medicare $284 apiece.

Device fraud has become an increasingly common way for criminals bilk the taxpayers. Durable medical equipment (DME) is widely perceived as a "high risk" area for fraud, according to a spokesman for the HHS Office of the Inspector General. And a report released last month by CMS found the error and improper payment rate for DME was above 60 percent, whereas no other area even entered double digits.

During the last presidential campaign, Barack Obama vowed to go through the budget, "line-by-line," to root out waste. Promises...promises...

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