# Medicare for All: What to be done to reduce fraud?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicare-for-all-what-to-be-done-to-reduce-fraud/848559>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [February 26, 2020, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicare-for-all-what-to-be-done-to-reduce-fraud/848559 "2020-02-26T16:37:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 31

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Northern\_Piper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/northern_piper/32/5304_2.png) [@Northern\_Piper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Northern_Piper)\
**Post date:** [February 29, 2020, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicare-for-all-what-to-be-done-to-reduce-fraud/848559/31 "2020-02-29T03:33:05Z")

</div>

> [@PastTense](#):
>
> I think it will be a lot easier to pick up the patterns since Medicare will be paying for almost all of it: for example you can see that it will be impossible for a doctor to be treating this many patients–there aren’t enough hours in a workday.

Based on news stories I’ve seen occasionally, that’s exactly how [del]fraud[/del] over-billing is caught in the Canadian process.

Since there’s only one payer, and it’s all computerised, the Medicare officials find auditing very easy: «Computer! Give us all the bills filed in Town X for ear-wax cleaning in 2019!»

Je he computer spits out the info, and Dr Jones is off the charts for ear-wax cleaning. No other doctor in Town X has such a high rate.

So the bean-counters say «Computer! Give us all the bills filed by all Doctors in the Province for ear-wax cleaning!»

And Dr Jones is again off the charts.

So Dr Jones will get a visit from the auditors. Maybe it turns out that Dr Jones has invented a new marvellous technique for ear-wax cleaning, and is getting tonnes of referrals from other doctors, of patients with stubborn ear-wax blockages.

Or maybe Dr Jones is cheating the system.

Either way, the auditors for a single-payer system have a strong advantage over auditors in a private insurance system.

And that drives down rates of fraud (not **Bryan Eckers** ´s theory about nice Canadians - sorry, Bryan. 😃 )

Criminologists have long been telling us that one of the best factors driving down criminal behaviour isn’t the severity of the punishment, but the chance of getting caught. If single-payer gives auditors better tools for catching fraudsters, then that drives down fraudulent behaviour.

---

_[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/medicare-for-all-what-to-be-done-to-reduce-fraud/848559)._