…are on the order of a hundred billion per year, a lot of it from Medicare/Medicaid.
One of the stupider arguments (among many) made by proponents of those programs it that they “have low overhead costs,” relative to private insurers. Well, it’s easy to have low overhead costs if you pay no attention to whether or not a claim is valid. I consider a hundred billion in overpayments in fact a very high overhead cost.
If only we didn’t spend so much money on Iraq, we could spend that money on medicare. Oh what’s that? Fraudulent medicare and medicaid payments exceed the yearly cost of the war in Iraq?
Do you have a citation to that figure or did you make it up?
http://www.paymentaccuracy.gov/high-priority-programs
For me, this sort of question illustrates the inherent dishonesty of entitlement spending. If no one with the appropriate power and authority looks for fraudulent collection of entitlements, then there can’t be a citation. The overhead of something like Medicare is wonderful, if they’re actually preventing fraud. And it’s way overpriced, if all they’re doing is making sure the checks get signed.