Medicare and Medicaid Need a Priority in the Recovery of Overpayments from Bankrupt Providers

This final report addresses the need to improve the recovery of Medicare and Medicaid overpayments from bankrupt providers. We found that: (1) the current Federal bankruptcy law does not provide Medicare and Medicaid with a priority in the recovery of overpayments from bankrupt providers, (2) neither Medicare nor Medicaid prepared management information reports on receivables written-off as bad debts, and (3) the losses to the Government from these bad debts may be substantial.