OIG report: Medicare made $1.7B in 'questionable' payments

A Thursday report casts a shadow over Medicare, raising new questions about fraud and mismanagement within the government insurance program for people who are retired or disabled. The inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report that found Medicare made billions of dollars in suspect payments to clinical laboratories around the country in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available. The report follows a similarly damaging account from the Senate Special Committee on Aging, which said Wednesday that improper Medicare payments are at a record high.