The White House announced Monday that it would let the national and public health decrees related to the Covid pandemic expire on May 11, 2023. That will end some of the federal rules that eased consumer costs perceived to be a problem during this pandemic. For example, the requirement that insurance companies cover eight at-home Covid tests a month. Every household can get eight at home COVID-19 tests, a month, on the U.S. taxpayers tab. The lifting of these emergency restrictions can’t come soon enough. Because with the announcement of no more government funded medical reimbursements, a gravy train for fraudsters also goes away. Because as of right now, government investigators have already detected more than $8.4 million in fraudulent claims for unwanted COVID tests. And these are detected only only! We haven’t even started with investigations.
Indiana’s Senior Medicare Office already has a few examples just from “detecting.” Mike Boyle has received eight COVID-19 tests over the last four months. None of them he has requested, yet Medicare has already been billed for all the COVID-19 tests that showed up in Boyles’ mailbox. His Medicare account shows the government paid $94.08 for each of the four shipments. That is nearly $400 for just one Medicare patient. Who is really not a patient since he didn’t ask for the tests!
As for the companies who are billing Boyle’s Medicare account, Channel 13 News reached out and asked them for evidence that Boyle actually ordered these test kits. None of them could provide proof. (Shocking that a fraudster couldn’t provide proof!) One of the companies is in a medical office near Detroit. Another has a storefront north of Chicago. The third is listed at a house outside Los Angeles, and 13News spoke to the woman who lives there, Merry Taheri. Merry is a nurse. Who has never sent a COVID-19 test kit to anyone. Who knows where the fraudsters COVID-19 shipping center is!
So, since we can’t trace who ordered the tests or who shipped the tests, kudos goes to the decision to end government funding of the COVID-19 test kits!
Fraud Of The Day is based on article “Taxpayers targeted by COVID-19 test kit fraud in final hours of pandemic health emergency” published by WHTR 13 Investigates on May 10, 2023
Government investigators have already detected more than $8.4 million in fraudulent claims for unwanted COVID tests. When Mike Boyles discovered an envelope with eight COVID-19 tests in his mailbox, his initial reaction was to be suspicious. “I didn’t order them. They just came out of nowhere,” the Indianapolis retiree told 13 Investigates.
A day later, another package arrived with eight more COVID-19 tests produced by a different manufacturer. And a week after that, a third package showed up at Boyles’ southeast side home with eight more tests from yet another company.
