Opinion: The government lawsuit against Kaiser points to an immense fraud problem in Medicare

For the better part of a decade, a time bomb has been ticking at Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente — an accumulation of allegations that the giant health plan systematically defrauded Medicare by overstating the severity of its patients’ medical conditions. On July 30, the bomb detonated. That’s when the Department of Justice joined six lawsuits filed by Kaiser employees since 2013 asserting that they witnessed the alleged fraud.