Customer Reviews

License To Steal: How Fraud bleeds america's health care system

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Although he has a wealth of expertise and a scholar's background, Sparrow speaks in a narrative style about the sad state of health care fraud in America today. While some progress is being made, there remains a little depth and sophistication in the responses to the complex and clever fraud schemes out there. Regretably, the many policitcal and institutional barriers to mesuring and uncovering fraud continue to allow the system to be drained of precious dollars. While it takes a large investment to begin the fight on the level Sparrow advocates, the return is immeasurably greater. Not recommended for folks who don't need their blood pressure to rise.

This text is the best high level review of the national health care fraud issue out there. It gives the first time health care fraud professional the basics. It is somewhat dated in 2006, but nevertheless a very informative read on the subject.

This is a remarkable book which opens the readers eyes to some of the "real" issues in the financial state of healthcare in the United States. It pulls together what the people in the trenches have struggled with for years ... and puts it into an easy to read text that you just CAN'T put down. This should be required text for anyone working in healthcare or anyone who receives care from the system.

This is one of the best books ever written about the abuse of the Medicare program. Thorough and informative all the way through.

This book did not really need to be written. It is written by a fraud investigator and is about nothing but specific fraud in Medicare, but we already knew there was tremendous Fraud. If you didn't know that billions are stolen in every conceivable way you do now, and don't need to read the book.
Yes, the gov't sends out $250 billion each year for healthcare related goods and services while somewhere between 5-50% is pure fraud, but what do we do? If you want a Fraud investigators answer: simply improve the software to spot anomalous patterns like one patient with 20 primary care providers in one month. If you want to know one new thing that has not been suggested and tried a million times before you will not find it here.
Creative and brilliant ideas such as medical savings accounts where each American deposits his own tax dollars his own medical savings account and is thereby given the maximum incentive to spend wisely are not considered. What is considered exclusively is fine tuning the likes of which have been tried and tried for the last 45 years.