Elmont Online

GLENVILLE -- There's been a lot of talk about outsourcing state work as Gov. Andrew Cuomo moves to lay off some 3,500 state employees, but does that include using volunteer senior citizens to track down Medicare fraud?

Greg Olsen, acting director at the state Office for the Aging, says emphatically that seniors aren't taking the place of professional fraud cops. But he and others on Monday stressed that they're always looking for more Medicare recipients to scout out and report potential cases of fraud.

After all, who better to detect some of the countless and constantly evolving Medicare scams than those who over rely on the program for their health care?

"Efforts like this are important regardless of what happens at the state or federal level," Olsen said as he and Jaye Weisman, Medicare's regional administrator for New York, met with some 120 seniors for a Medicare Fraud Summit at the Scotia-Glenville Senior Center.

In addition to an update on the latest Medicare scams, including one that uses social media sites such as Facebook, these officials renewed their call for people to volunteer with the Senior Medicare Patrol.

"We deputize them," Weisman said. While not sworn law officers, she said these volunteer eyes and ears are important because there are so many of them.

There are 100,000 Medicare recipients in the Capital Region, and 3 million in New York state. "That's 100,000 sets of eyes," said Weisman.

Actually, serving on the patrol can be as simple as keeping a close watch on the quarterly statements that Medicare recipients receive and making sure there are no strange or unexplained charges, said Weisman.

Officials passed out large print "journals" that people could use to keep track of their Medicare statements and compare them with doctor bills.

The federally funded health insurance program for seniors, Medicare dates to 1965. Scams, frauds and ripoffs are nothing new.

"I get probably three different scams a week," said Tim Kovarik, who oversees anti-fraud efforts at the Office for the Aging.

"There's a lot of money in it," added Lisa Gerrard, an agent with the federal Inspector General's Office.

The scams are ever-changing, and tend to stay abreast of social and technological trends. One of the newest involves trolling social media sites like Facebook for personal information; scammers call up posing as, say, a grandson who is in trouble and needs money wired to him. In addition to cash, scam artists are able to get the victim's all-important Medicare number, which they can use for phantom billings.

And those ads on daytime TV for free scooters? Some of those are scams as well, warned officials.

President Barack Obama's Affordable Health Care Act includes provisions for boosting the anti-fraud efforts as well as the volunteer corps, allocating $350 million over 10 years, said Weisman.

Some of the roughly 120 seniors who attended said they keep track of their Medicare statements, but welcome any tips on how to do that more accurately.

"How to protect myself -- that's the basic thing," said Richard Garneau, 74, of Schenectady.

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