Medicare Fraud

This is from the MSNBC website but it is by  AP newswriter Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar.
I will quote the pertinent paragraphs, if you want to read it all in context go here. 

They don't seem that interested in hot pursuit. It took private sleuths hired by Medicare an average of six months last year to refer fraud cases to law enforcement.

According to congressional investigators, the exact average was 178 days. By that time, many cases go cold, making it difficult to catch perpetrators, much less recover money for taxpayers.

A recent inspector general report also raised questions about the contractors, who play an important role in Medicare's overall effort to combat fraud.

Out of $835 million in questionable Medicare payments identified by private contractors in 2007, the government was only able to recover some $55 million, or about 7 percent, the report found.

Medicare overpayments - they can be anything from a billing error to a flagrant scam - totaled more than $36 billion in 2009, according to the Obama administration.