Medicare Payee: Who's watching the store?

http://www.ssa.gov/pubs/10076.html is a government publication that warns that most representatives are not eligible to get paid for handling the paperwork for medicare or SSI payments UNLESS....ah, the devil's in the details.

With all the public disclosure required, with all the dotting of the i's and crossing of the t's required by insureds to get reimbursed for anything, it's time for information about those "handling" paperwork for a medicare or SSI recipient to have to publicly open their books, both to the paying government and to relatives who now cannot prove illegitimate use of government funds because of barriers to gaining access to such information.

Everyone at every income level has seen the abuses of the systems by "rescuing" relatives who caretake the elderly or otherwise infirm. However, the fraud involved in this management is rampant and has only made the news in the most egregious cases, including Lady Astor in NY and last week, a case reported about a physician who drained his mother's estate in the amounts of nearly one million.

The names and amounts being received by these concerned relatives should be available to interested parties. The undue influence and mental state of aging relatives combined with the lack of oversight and lack of availability of such information has created a cottage industry of "caretakers" diverting funds from aging or otherwise infirm citizens.

In short it is the I can't be bothered with paperwork attitude whether through inability or unwillingness on the part of the individual entitled to benefits that creates the opportunities for swooping relatives to earn money by managing the paper lives of the infirm or incompetent.

While the emotional and financial implications of this niche industry are enormous, the government does nothing to address the problem in the simplest way...open the books. Reporting "suspected" fraud in these cases faces the same barriers as bringing formerly competent relatives to court to have them declared incompetent, those who hope to see people spend the end of their lives peacefully restrain from such action. This makes governmental action more urgent.

It is time for the Medicare and SSI branches of government to make histories of payments available to all interested third parties by publishing the paperwork, including monies taken as a stipend or salary.