Little Fraud in SNAP or Disability, Mostly Medicare

...and it's not because of old sick people.

The amount of money lost to underground trafficking in food stamps is estimated to be 1.3 percent annually. That is down from more than 4 percent in the 1990s, when paper coupons had not yet been replaced by electronic benefit cards, called E.B.T.’s

But if we also included erroneous payments to food stamps recipients (because of errors on the part of the government), or outright lying on the initial SNAP applications, then the overall loss to the food stamp program is about 4.7 percent.

But the rate of fraud In SNAP is still less than other government programs.

The Government Accountability Office has estimated that Medicare and Medicaid annually loses nearly 10 percent to fraud --- which we can partially attribute to people like Mitt Romney and Rick Scott --- as well as Big Pharma, corrupt doctors and hospitals (and not to old sick people.) See my posts:

• Gain at the Price of Patient Pain by Big Pharma
• Fraud, Greed & Profits Drives Healthcare Costs 
• Will Healthcare Fraud ever End?

After analyzing Social Security Administration data on individuals who were beneficiaries of Disability Insurance (DI), the Government Accountability Office estimates that improper payments DI beneficiaries represented only 0.4 percent of all primary DI beneficiaries.

But even by using a broader measure of methodology, the Social Security Administration estimated its DI overpayments were 1.27 percent of all DI benefits --- the least amount of fraud in of all entitlement programs. Yet Republican Senator Tom Coburn (using limited and anecdotal evidence) recently claimed that there was "widespread abuse" in the disability program.

Now, by comparison, let's look at all the waste, fraud and abuse in the Defense Department (that the Republicans are always so gung-ho for.)