Social Welfare Law Commons^™

Note: The Federal False Claims Act: A Potential Deterrent To Medicaid Fraud And Abuse, Peter J. Sherman

Fordham Urban Law Journal

A scandal that seems certain to occupy headline space during the foreseeable future is the abuse of the Medicare and Medicaid programs, under which state agencies provide medical assistance to the elderly, needy and disabled with largely-federal funding. Medicaid fraud and abuse wastes an estimated three billion dollars of tax money each year. Senate investigators who studied the problem found that "rampant fraud and abuse exists among practitioners participating in the Medicaid program" and among participating medical testing laboratories. The Federal False Claims Act (FCA), a statute more than a century old, provides a potential deterrent to such fraud and …