Maybe Dr. Oz, as administrator for the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, should concentrate on Medicare services rather than Medicaid when looking for fraud (“Gov. Mills, Dr. Oz spar over Maine Medicaid investigations,” Portland Press Herald, Feb. 10).

I use Martin’s Point Health Care as my “Medicare Advantage” provider; I was appalled when this paper reported, on Aug. 1, 2023, that my provider would refund $22 million in inflated payments to Medicare. 

The report noted that “Martin’s Point repeatedly pressured and directed employees and contractors to ignore unsupported codes.” 

“Stunningly, in 2017, when Martin’s Point retroactively reviewed a sample of three years of medical charts, it found that the patients did not have (or the charts did not support) the illnesses reported to and paid by Medicare … in response, Martin’s Point did nothing.”

In an October 2022 article in the New York Times, it was reported that “an estimated $12 billion in overpayments to the Medicare Advantage programs in 2020.”

Gateway Community Services discovered, in an audit, that it had received $1.1 million in overpayments in 2021 and 2022. This Medicaid “scandal” looks like small potatoes compared to the Medicare fraud perpetrated by our own, well respected, provider right here in Maine. 

The present administration would have us believe that our Somali neighbors are thieves. The rich and politically connected Medicare provider may look like a fine upstanding citizen, but they were the ones who had to pay back $22 million of our hard-earned tax dollars.

John Schaberg
Portland