Report Identifies States with Highest Medicare Spending Rates

February 2017 ~

A new study has identified nine states, along with the District of Columbia, as those responsible for the vast majority of the total improper payments.

According to the recent analysis conducted by the Council for Medicare Integrity (CMI), Medicare made about $43 billion in improper payments in fiscal year 2015. “Medicare loses more money to improper payments than any other program government wide,” said a CMI spokespersons in a statement.

As identified in the report, the states with the highest Medicare waste per beneficiary are as follows:

Credit: Council for Medicare Integrity, January 18, 2017

For the analysis, CMI looked at the amount of Medicare overpayments collected from healthcare providers through the Recovery Audit Contractor (RAC) program in each state and the District of Columbia in FY 2015. Overpayment amounts were then divided by the number of Medicare beneficiaries in each state to determine the amount of taxpayer dollars wasted per beneficiary.

Full report details are available via CMI’s Trend Report: States & Medicare Waste.

Source(s): Council for Medicare Integrity, January 18, 2017; Business Insider, January 19, 2017; American Health Line, January 30, 2017; BizJournals, January 30, 2017; Becker’s Hospital Review, January 30, 2017;