House Acts to Ban Incompetent or Venal Doctors From Medicare

WASHINGTON —  The House on Tuesday unanimously passed a bill to protect Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries from negligent, incompetent and criminal doctors and to better shield government health programs against fraud.

The vote on the Medicare and Medicaid Patient and Program Protection Act was 403 to 0.

The bill closes loopholes that, for example, have enabled doctors who lose their licenses in one state to move elsewhere and continue receiving government payments for treating Medicare and Medicaid patients.

The House passed the bill in the last Congress but the Senate failed to act. This year, the Senate Finance Committee has approved the measure and sent it to the floor.

Several congressmen called the new provisions long overdue.

“There’s a small and very sleazy minority (of doctors) that is simply trying to rip off Medicare and Medicaid,” Rep. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said. “They are getting more inventive all the time. We very much need these tools to put them on the sidelines . . . for good.”

Among the provisions of the House bill:

--Health care providers convicted of crimes stemming from Medicare or Medicaid fraud or abuse and neglect of patients would be barred from the programs for at least five years.

--The secretary of the Health and Human Services Department would have broader grounds to exclude doctors, hospitals or other providers from Medicare, Medicaid, the maternal and child health program and medical services under the Social Services block grant.

--States would have to give the federal government information on health care providers convicted of program abuse or subjected to disciplinary action or lose federal Medicaid funds. The federal government would have to supply similar information to the states.