IBM exec offers to save $900 billion in health care costs, but Obama turned him down
Local Opinion Editor
The CEO of IBM offered the Obama administration a free software program that would have cut Medicare and Medicaid fraud by almost a trillion dollars, but he was turned down – twice.
"We could have improved the quality and reduced the cost of the healthcare system by $900 billion...I said we would do it for free to prove that it works. They turned us down, "IBM chairman and CEO Samuel Palmisano said during a Sept. 14, 2010 taping of the Wall Street Journal’s Viewpoints program.
FOX News confirmed that a second meeting between Palmisano and Obama administration officials yielded the same result: "No thanks!" – even though the proffered "fix" would have eliminated 90 percent of the nation’s health care deficit – and cost taxpayers nothing it didn’t perform as guaranteed.
Yet Medicare/Medicaid fraud is still rampant. According to the Manhattan Institute’s Steven Malanga,"abuses of Medicaid (alone) eat up at least 10 percent of the program’s total cost nationwide -- a waste of $30 billion a year. Unscrupulous doctors billing for over 24 hours per day of procedures, phony companies invoicing for phantom services, pharmacists filling prescriptions for dead patients, home health-care companies demanding payment for treating clients actually in the hospital -- on and on the rip-offs go."
