New York Times Prints AAHomecare's Response to Medicare Fraud Article and Editorial

Fighting Medicare Fraud

To the Editor:

Re “Medicare’s Claims” (editorial, Aug. 22) and “Report Rejects Medicare Data on Less Fraud” (front page, Aug. 21):

It’s important for the federal agency in charge of Medicare to collect and publish accurate Medicare fraud statistics.

We applaud your effort to get to the bottom of Medicare fraud numbers, but it was disappointing to see your article link two separate issues — pricing through competitive bidding and fraud prevention.

Our industry has favored accreditation as a fraud deterrent for decades. The action by Congress in July to delay and fix the deeply flawed bidding program will not reduce or delay efforts to combat fraud.

The exact opposite is true. Congress strengthened the accreditation requirements in the new Medicare law and closed a loophole that would have allowed nonaccredited providers to serve Medicare beneficiaries. We applaud those measures.

We will continue to support efforts by Congress and federal agencies to find more effective ways of keeping criminals out of the Medicare program.

Tyler J. Wilson
Arlington, Va., Aug. 22, 2008

The writer is president of the American Association for Homecare.

To read the comment at the New York Times and leave a comment, visit http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/24/opinion/l24medicare.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin.