Beware of Medicare "spies". (NH News Notes).

Senior sleuths trained by 54 government-sponsored Senior Medicare Patrol Projects have helped recoup almost $4 million for Medicare and reportedly close to $80 million for other payers, according to a DHHS memorandum. Since the first projects-began in 1997, nearly 1.1 million Medicare beneficiaries have been educated to be on the lookout for Medicare fraud, waste, and abuse, and to report it to federal authorities. The recouped Medicare funds maybe even greater than $4 million, since the projects neither track seniors who call the OIG fraud hotline (or other contacts) nor monitor the results of Medicare beneficiaries' increased scrutiny of their bills.

For more details, visit http://oig.hhs.gov/oei/reports/oei-02-03-00120.pdf.