The Real Swindlers
NPR has a good story about how swindlers are already trying to take advantage of the confusion over the Affordable Care Act to run health-care scams:
Days after President Obama signed the $938 billion bill into law, a cable television advertisement exhorted viewers to call an 800-number so they wouldn't miss a "limited enrollment" period to obtain coverage available "now that historic health-care legislation has passed."
And there have already been reports of door-to-door salespeople peddling "Obamacare" insurance policies.
There is, of course, no limited enrollment period for any coverage, and no such thing as a new federal insurance policy named after the president.
As NPR notes, the "bitter and divisive" debate over health reform has been a boon for the scam market, which has sought to exploit the public misconceptions about the bill. Given how quickly the "death panel" meme caught on -- and how long such fabrications have persisted in the political discourse -- the idea of purchasing an "Obamacare" insurance policy might not seem so far-fetched.
The new health law does commit millions of dollars to beefing up anti-fraud enforcement and oversight, as insurance fraud has a long history of plaguing the health-care system, and the system's upcoming expansion will create new opportunities for exploitation. In the Medicare and Medicaid programs, for example, fraudsters have long perpetrated billing scams that prey upon the elderly and the poor -- and their schemes have become increasingly complex, as I explained in the New Republic last year. The biggest scam artists aren't going to be door-to-door hucksters, but sophisticated white-collar criminals who are likely to try to exploit new changes like the conversion to electronic health records to defraud the system on a large scale. And these schemes make dispelling the myths about the new health law -- and clarifying the real changes that are afoot -- all the more important.
Health Care Reform Frequently Asked Questions. Probably not all the answers to every question, but a good start in plain language.
