According to an exclusive report from The Wall Street Journal, an analysis of billions of Medicare records showed private insurers connected to the federal government’s $450 billion-a-year Medicare Advantage program issued “hundreds of thousands of questionable diagnoses that triggered extra taxpayer-funded payments from 2018 to 2021.”
The Journal noted that the program currently covers more than half of the 67 million seniors and disabled people on Medicare. It explained that insurers can add their own diagnoses in addition to the ones doctors submit for their patients.
“Medicare gave insurers that option so they could catch conditions that doctors neglected to record,” the Journal stated, adding, “The Journal’s analysis, however, found many diagnoses were added for which patients received no treatment, or that contradicted their doctors’ views. The insurers make new…
