March 3, 2011 3:41PM # ‘Medicare Loses Nearly Four Times as Much Money as Health Insurers Make’ By [Michael F. Cannon](https://www.cato.org/people/michael-f-cannon) --- SHARE The latest from Jeffrey H. Anderson, which I’ll file under I‑Wish-I’d-Said-That: > In a newly released [report](http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d11430t.pdf), the Government Accountability Office (GAO) estimates that, in fiscal year 2010, $48 billion in taxpayer money was squandered on fraudulent or improper Medicare claims. Meanwhile, the nation’s ten largest health insurance companies made [combined profits of $12.7 billion](http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/industries/223/index.html) in 2010 (according to *Fortune* 500). In other words, for every $1 made by the nation’s ten largest insurers, Medicare lost nearly $4… > > > Actually, it may have been even worse than that: The GAO writes that this $48 billion in taxpayer money that went down the drain doesn’t even represent Medicare’s full tally of lost revenue, since it “did not include improper payments in its Part D prescription drug benefit, for which the agency has not yet estimated a total amount.” Courtesy of *[The Weekly Standard](http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/medicare-loses-nearly-four-times-much-money-health-insurers-make_552860.html)*. ##### Related Tags [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics), [Health Care](https://www.cato.org/health-care) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).