Medicare fraud

Medicare, the taxpayer-funded federal health care program for senior citizens, will pay for equipment that an enrolled individual needs due to an injury or illness.

Wheelchairs, walkers and the like. You may have seen advertisements targeting seniors peddling items such as motorized scooters -- Medicare will pay the costs, the announcer assures potential customers.

One problem: The whole well-intentioned effort is rife with fraud.

On Monday, Medicare officials announced that about 7,500 providers of medical equipment in Los Angeles and South Florida will have to reapply to do business with the government and then undergo inspections.

Both areas are hotbeds of Medicare rip-offs, officials said, with the cost to taxpayers running in the hundreds of millions of dollars.

According to The Associated Press, "Thousands of elderly and disabled beneficiaries in those two regions have received power wheelchairs, walkers and other items they did not require. In other cases, sham businesses billed Medicare for equipment never ordered by a doctor nor delivered to a patient."

The money usually goes to line the pockets of scam artists or unscrupulous medical equipment firms.

Of course, massive government programs run by Washington bureaucrats tend to have more difficulty with waste, fraud and mismanagement than their private-sector counterparts. It's one reason why Medicare reform -- reform that emphasizes market incentives and accountability -- can't wait much longer or the entire program will be flat broke.

But at least Monday's action is a step toward tackling this one particular problem. Those who have been pulling medical equipment scams are less likely to apply for additional business if they realize they'll be subject to more regular inspections.

In the meantime, con artists caught blatantly defrauding taxpayers should be prosecuted fully -- and Medicare officials should expand this new approach to other major cities.