When your Medicare Summary Notice arrives, it’s easy to glance at the amount you owe and ignore everything Medicare paid behind the scenes. CMS’s latest fraud crackdown offers a compelling reason to read the rest of the page. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services says recent enforcement actions have stopped more than $1.6 billion in potentially improper Medicare laboratory payments, including claims involving tests that allegedly weren’t performed. The agency says it revoked 157 fraudulent laboratory providers, suspended payments to other labs, and recouped hundreds of millions of dollars in identified overpayments. Checking your Medicare Summary Notice for fraud won’t take down a national scheme by itself, but beneficiaries can spot something sophisticated computer models sometimes can’t: a test you know you never had.
