$60 Billion lost to health care fraud each year, according to Attorney General Eric Holder.

Attorney General Eric Holder on Thursday pledged to apply more pressure on health-care fraudsters who siphon billions of dollars from the federal fisc each year.

Holder, speaking at a health-care fraud summit at the National Institutes of Health, said he would push to strengthen a Cabinet-level team devoted to the effort, as well as beef up anti-fraud strike forces around the country. Holder also said he would ask Congress for more funding and legislation targeting fraud, and reach out to the private sector — one of the aims of Thursday’s summit.

The Attorney General said more than $60 billion in public and private health-care spending was lost to fraud each year. Holder, joined by Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, brought the oft-cited estimate to life with a bit of pop-culture.

“That is a staggering amount of money,” Holder said in prepared remarks. “It’s half the entire economy of Secretary Sebelius’s home state of Kansas. It’s more than the net worth of America’s eight largest private foundations. And it’s 33 times the amount of money that Avatar — now the highest-earning movie of all time — has made at the box office.”


Link:
http://www.mainjustice.com/2010/01/28/health-care-fraud-losses-33-times-avatar-box-office-gross/