Subject: GAZETTE: Medicare photo has cut fraud, Cote says
From: [email-masked] (Stewart Clamen)
Date: 6 May 93 20:37:56 GMT
Newsgroups: talk.politics.medicine,can.politics

^ ,
	       MEDICARE PHOTO HAS CUT FRAUD, COTE SAYS

			     TU THANH HA
			Gazette Quebec Bureau

		     (reprinted with permission)

QUEBEC -- In the three months after Quebec switched to a merdicare
card with an identification photo, more than 60,000 people did not
renew their cards, Halth Minister Marc-Yvan Co^te' said yesterday.

This supports his contention, he said, that the addition of a photo
has deterred a large number of people who obtained cards fraudulently.

"Here are numbers that speak for themselves," Cote' told a legislature
committee studying his department's spending.  "Here are concrete
examples of decisions that worked right."

Quebec medicare cards renewed since October carry a picutre of the
holder.

The move was condemned initially by civil libertarians, but Cote' said
the numbers how it has been beneficial.

Of 355,000 people who were issued renewal notices, he said, 61,000
didn't ask for another card, even though they were sent reminders
twice.

Also in the past year, the number of people who said they needed a
replacemennnt card --- because the original was damanged, lost or
stolen --- has dropped by more than half from the year before, to
37,564 from 77,280.

"I leave it to you to draw you own conclusions," Cote' said with a
smile.

The new medicare card isn't the only cost-cutting measure Cote' has
enacted.

Since last May, medicare coverage of routine eye tests and dental
exams has been reduced and elderly people have been charged $2 each
time they have a prescription filled.

For the period from May 15, 1992, to March 31 of this year, the $2
prescription fee raked in $33.6 million while demand declined by $17.5
million.

Counting people who got reimbursements, the policy yielded a net
saving of $29 million.

In addition, dental-examination expenses were cut by $28.2 million
while eye-test costs were down by $17.5 million.

Finally, curtailing medicare reimbursements to Quebecers admitted to
hospitals outside the country has saved $5.9 million.

--
Stewart M. Clamen			Internet:    [email-masked]
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