US health department recovers $4bn through antifraud action

The US Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Justice announced on Monday 24 January that the government’s healthcare fraud prevention and enforcement efforts had recovered more than $4bn (€2.5bn; $2.9bn) in the 2010 fiscal year.

The money came from drug companies, hospitals, doctors’ offices, nursing homes, and other healthcare providers that had cheated the government. It was “the highest annual amount ever recovered from people who tried to defraud seniors and taxpayers,” the departments said in a joint statement.

The $4bn had been stolen from federal healthcare programmes and was returned to Medicare, which provides health insurance for elderly people, the Treasury, and other …