MIAMI — Firms that are paid tens of millions of dollars to root out Medicare fraud are bidding on contracts to investigate companies they are doing business with — sometimes their own parent companies, according to a government report released Tuesday.
Two-thirds of the companies that bid on contracts during a nearly year-and-a-half time period beginning in October of 2010 had financial ties to claims processors — and in some cases also processed Medicare claims themselves, according to the study by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector-general. The report blames what it calls a flawed bidding system and an inadequate conflict-of-interest policy.
