Senior Financial Group wants you to be informed about and protected against Medicare fraud. Medicare fraud occurs when a company offers a plan that is not approved by Medicare, or when you are billed for supplies and/or services that you do not receive, whether it’s by the healthcare provider or an anonymous scammer.

Medicare loses billions of dollars because of these fraudulent claims every year, which results in higher health care costs for everyone. If we could prevent fraud and decrease the consequential costs, it could increase the quality of services for those who are in need of care.

• The Affordable Care Act has recovered more than $10 billion since 2008 due to efforts to fight health care fraud, waste, and abuse.
• HEAT (Health Care Fraud Prevention and Enforcement Action Team) leads a Medicare Strike Force team to help take the fight against fraud to an even more extreme level. They have charged 90 individuals for approximately $260 million in false billing.
• The Public-Private Partnership to Prevent Health Care Fraud is a voluntary collaboration of partners that includes the federal government, state officials, anti-fraud groups, and several leading private health insurance organizations.
• Additionally, the government has funded Senior Medicare Patrols that consist of senior volunteers that educate their peers to help better prevent and report health care fraud. Almost 27 million people are estimated to have been reached by SMP community education events.

As mentioned above, there are several large groups in place to help prevent and stop Medicare Fraud, however it’s still vital to be personally aware. If you have any suspicions or questions, please call us at Senior Financial Group at (865) 777-0153 so that we can help. Click here to read more on how to personally prevent Medicare fraud.