Government oversight agencies on Tuesday said the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services had taken important steps to cut down on fraud and abuse but urged administrators to go further and finalize additional rules. Before a hearing of the House Oversight subcommittee on healthcare, Kathleen King, the General Accountability Office's director of healthcare, and Brian Ritchie, an acting deputy inspector general at the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General, listed a number of steps the agency could take to further prevent or recoup losses from fraud. King told lawmakers that the CMS had estimated that "improper payments in the Medicare program were almost $50 billion in fiscal year 2013."
