A Good Gig for Medical Providers
Jul 31, 202047.9K Shares737.1K Views
Let’s say you’re a medical provider, like a hospital, a nursing home or a doctor. Let’s say also that you bill Medicare regularly because you care for Medicare patients. You might think that the federal government would have a system in place to garnish those payments in the event that you owe back-taxes.
But it doesn’t.
In fact, according to a newly released Government Accountability Office report, roughly 27,000 Medicare providers (or 6 percent) received millions of dollars in federal payments in 2006 at the same time that they owed more than $2 billion in outstanding taxes.
In one case, an unnamed nursing home received $15 million in Medicare payments while it owed $7 million in tax debt. In another, a hospital owed $15 million in unpaid taxes, but still received $21 million from Medicare. One hospital owner lived in a $6-million home. (Nice.)
Part of the reason is this: The IRS is legally prohibited from sharing tax data with the agency that runs Medicare. To get around that technicality, other contract-heavy agencies, like the Defense Dept., screen payments through a special branch of the Treasury Dept. that matches tax evaders with federal contractors for the purpose of recouping tax debt. Medicare is in line to participate in the program, but it’s payment system isn’t yet compatible with that of the Treasury. According to The Washington Post, Medicare officials say they’re shooting to have all payments screened by October.
The GAO report came at the request of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Investigations Subcommittee, headed by Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Norm Coleman (R-Minn.). The two have been pushing legislation to expedite the screening process for more than a year. From a Levin statement:
“„These tax deadbeats are guilty of shortchanging the government and forcing honest American citizens to shoulder the taxes they are shirking. Medicare has agreed to rewire its payment systems so that the federal tax levy program can step in and take a portion of the payments made to deadbeat doctors and physicians to pay off their outstanding tax debt. It ought to be obvious that folks who make their living off taxpayer dollars have a special obligation to pay their taxes.
Rhyley Carney
Reviewer
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