US recovers $4.2B from healthcare fraud probes

The Obama administration said on Monday that its efforts to combat fraud in the Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs were paying off as the government recovered a record $4.2 billion in fiscal 2012 from individuals and companies trying to cheat the system. For every dollar spent investigating healthcare fraud over the past three years, the government recovered $7.90, according to a report released on Monday by Attorney General Eric Holder and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. This was the highest three-year average return on investment in the 16-year history of the federal Health Care Fraud and Abuse Program, the report said.