Only time will tell whether the healthcare reform laws passed by Congress this spring will be the salvation Democrats promise or the nightmare Republicans predict. One consequence, however, has already become clear: Enforcement of anti-fraud laws will increase dramatically.
Any business receiving government money for healthcare—hospitals, doctors, nursing homes, medical-device makers, health insurers, suppliers to any of those, and many more—now face a world of much more emboldened regulators, freshly armed with hundreds of millions in new money to fight fraud. What’s more, the language in several key statutes has also been changed to expand the scope of liability for fraud and who can press fraud claims against businesses accepting government funds. And as ever-more numbers of U.S. citizens see at least part of their health insurance funded by the government, that hawkish eye searching for potential fraud is likely to be permanent.
