Fraud and abuse: the payer's perspective.

As the health care sector consumes an ever-increasing portion of our nation's gross national product (GNP)), forecast to represent 15 percent of the GNP by the year 2000, increasingly intensive efforts are being used to control the growth rate of these costs. Medicare fraud alone is estimated to represent $2 billion yearly. Abusive billing of private health insurers represents a far larger amount. This article discusses the concept of fraudulent and abusive physician billing practices.