The ACA's New Weapons against Health Care Fraud

Abstract

Marshaling expanded financial resources, aggressive new legal authority, and rare bipartisan solidarity, the Obama administration is accelerating federal efforts to fight health care fraud, waste, and abuse that cost taxpayers and private insurers billions of dollars every year. Although the new forms of authority are granted by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which Republicans unanimously opposed, most GOP legislators strongly support — and some even sponsored measures to enable¹ — the more rigorous crackdown on illegal activities that plague Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers. Under past policies, Congress and the executive branch “way, way, way” underspent on fighting health care fraud, according to Kerry Weems, who was acting administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) from 2007 to 2009.²