{"title":"Can Whistleblowers Root Out Public Expenditure Fraud? Evidence from Medicare","authors":"Jetson Leder-Luis","doi":"10.1162/rest_a_01339","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"\n This paper analyzes private anti-fraud enforcement under the False Claims Act, which compensates whistleblowers for litigating against healthcare providers who overbill the US government. I conduct several case studies of successful whistleblower lawsuits concerning Medicare fraud, pairing new legal data with large samples of Medicare claims. I estimate that deterrence from $1.9 billion in whistleblower settlements generated Medicare cost savings of nearly $19 billion, while imposing low costs on the government. These results suggest private enforcement is a cost-effective way to combat public expenditure fraud.","PeriodicalId":48456,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economics and Statistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-05-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Economics and Statistics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01339","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
This paper analyzes private anti-fraud enforcement under the False Claims Act, which compensates whistleblowers for litigating against healthcare providers who overbill the US government. I conduct several case studies of successful whistleblower lawsuits concerning Medicare fraud, pairing new legal data with large samples of Medicare claims. I estimate that deterrence from $1.9 billion in whistleblower settlements generated Medicare cost savings of nearly $19 billion, while imposing low costs on the government. These results suggest private enforcement is a cost-effective way to combat public expenditure fraud.
期刊介绍:
The Review of Economics and Statistics is a 100-year-old general journal of applied (especially quantitative) economics. Edited at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Review has published some of the most important articles in empirical economics.