Health waste-really discusting

Osprey Media. - Brantford Expositor: "The Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care is not doing enough to ensure
that only those people who are eligible for OHIP services receive them
and that health-care providers are paid for only those billings that are
appropriate,' McCarter said in his report.
Among the problems the auditor found:
* Ontario's health ministry is already six years behind schedule
with plans to replace old red-and-white health cards with new photo
cards and estimates it will take another 14 years to finish the job;
* As first identified in a 1992 audit, there are 300,000 more
health cards than people in Ontario, most of them in border communities
and the Greater Toronto Area;
* The ministry has failed to verify citizenship documents for 70
per cent of all existing health card holders. Citizenship status for
health cards is supposed to be checked with the same provincial and
federal officials in charge of birth certificates and citizenship
documents but a huge verification backlog exists;
* Some 11,700 card holders submitted clams from different regions
across the province within a short period of time, 'possibly indicating
health-cards were being used inappropriately.
McCarter also found potential over-billing by one group of physicians of
$9.7 million since 2001; a health provider who billed $800,000 on six
health cards over four years; medical claims paid to 40 doctors whose
licences had either been taken away or expired and 'even deceased
doctors being paid OHIP claims.'
Despite evidence of fraud, including a 2004 consultant's report that
estimated OHIP fraud in the $11 million to $22 million range annually"