Assuming the figures you quoted are correct, how much of the medicare budget is spent on fraud prevention? That includes:
* time spent by Congress and Medicare deciding what is and what is not covered,
* deciding who is and who is not covered,
* what the rules and processes are for preventing and discovering fraud,
* what the process is for handling fraud
* the actual time needed to enforce these rules and follow the processes
* time spent by care givers and patients complying with the rules
I suspect that all of that adds up to more than 10%, and it would go much higher if Medicare tried to reduce the fraud rate below 10% through further enforcement.
Medicare's budget is around ~$600 billion. It is highly unlikely that the CBO, FBI, DHS, and IRS spend $60 billion looking into potential medicare fraud given how many of those just named organizations could fit into a $60 billion budget (3 of the 4).
Strangely, you left out of that list of organization the main one that investigates Medicare fraud (and the one whose expenses in doing so are included in Medicare's budget), to wit, HHS, the agency that actually administers Medicare.
(Three of the Four agencies you mentioned don't even investigate Medicare fraud, except incidentally.)
Those organizations do investigate medicare fraud with the HHS. And do you really believe that more than $60 billion is being spent investigating? That would make the auditing organization roughly 6 times as big as the IRS.
Given how big a deal the FBI made out of a medicare fraud case that garnered nation attention just a few weeks ago, I'd say very little is spent tracking down fraud.
> And do you really believe that more than $60 billion is being spent investigating?
I don't think it really matters, since you are the one who narrowed the original suggestion that the total cost of Medicare fraud -- which you've stated is $60 billion with a handwave at CBO without specific citation -- might be less than the total cost of resources expended in "fraud prevention" (not just investigation), including (explicitly, per the post upthread) the resources expended in all of the following activities:
* Congress and Medicare deciding what is and what is not covered
* deciding who is and who is not covered,
* what the rules and processes are for preventing and discovering fraud
* what the process is for handling fraud
* the actual time needed to enforce these rules and follow the processes
* time spent by care givers and patients complying with the rules
You reducing this to just investigation costs is, well, missing the point being made.
Assuming the figures you quoted are correct, how much of the medicare budget is spent on fraud prevention? That includes:
* time spent by Congress and Medicare deciding what is and what is not covered, * deciding who is and who is not covered, * what the rules and processes are for preventing and discovering fraud, * what the process is for handling fraud * the actual time needed to enforce these rules and follow the processes * time spent by care givers and patients complying with the rules
I suspect that all of that adds up to more than 10%, and it would go much higher if Medicare tried to reduce the fraud rate below 10% through further enforcement.