I guess Boba Fett has just joined the health care debate. They won't be looking for people that haven't bought insurance on pain of disintegration (that is in a future health care bill) but for Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
The bounty hunters in this case would be private auditors armed with sophisticated computer programs to scan Medicare and Medicaid billing data for patterns of bogus claims. The auditors would get to keep part of any funds they recover for the government. The White House said a pilot program run by Medicare in California, New York and Texas recouped $900 million for taxpayers from 2005-2008.
I would love to get my hands on that Medicare and Medicaid billing data itself to make sophisticated investing decisions. I would query the database for the amount of fake hips that are being paid for and what company produces them and their growth rate year to year. You can also see exactly how many times certain medicines are prescribed and in what part of the country as well.
That database would be a treasure trove for any Health Care oriented Hedge Fund. I bet Goldman Sachs' will have a Medicaire fraud database division up and running before the end of the week this thing is signed into law. They will just plug this data into their investing black boxes and roll in yet more cash.
And knowing that the Government will run the program I would be willing to bet you any money that billing information will not have the patients names redacted as well. So if you have some terrible disease then that data is only safe if some faceless shlub working for the Department of Health codes the database correctly.
These are the same people that accidentally added 100s of fake districts to the US and made a mess of how many jobs each of these districts were "saving." It is sad when even "populist" proposals can be subverted so quickly.
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