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Hi. I’m Dan Levinson.
the Inspector General at the U.S Department of Health and Human Services.
It is my pleasure to introduce you to the Office of Inspector General.
Our goal is to ensure healthy lives for the people we serve
through efficient and effective government programs,
more than 300 of them.
We represent the Federal Government’s largest team of civilian auditors.
We’re also the premier health care law enforcement agency.
Part of our job is to make sure agency funds are spent properly.
Every year we investigate, prosecute, and convict
hundreds of individuals and their companies who misuse or steal taxpayer dollars.
As a result of our work, we recover billions.
We also make recommendations to the Department
on how to streamline programs to save time and money,
and to improve public health and safety.
This includes protecting the safety of our food supply,
reducing medical errors in hospitals,
and being prepared for acts of bioterrorism.
The largest programs we oversee are Medicare and Medicaid.
These two programs alone provide health insurance to one in three Americans
at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars.
Keeping these programs operating free from
waste, fraud and abuse is a vital part of our mission.
Unfortunately, the sheer size of these programs makes them vulnerable to criminals.
A snapshot of our high-profile work in Medicare and Medicaid
includes continually reviewing how much the government pays for health care,
investigating large pharmaceutical companies that market drugs for improper use,
and investigating medical equipment suppliers to make sure they’re legitimate businesses,
not just shams set up to defraud the government.
We do this with a team of auditors, evaluators, lawyers, and criminal investigators.
Yet, despite our best efforts, some criminals elude our reach.
When they do, we post their faces and names on our “Most Wanted Fugitives” website.
Under the new Affordable Care Act,
we continue to work to improve the integrity of Medicare and Medicaid expenditures.
We also promote quality of care for patients.
And we provide guidance to health care providers,
such as our Roadmap on how to better comply with health care laws.
such as our Roadmap on how to better comply with health care laws.
I hope this gives you a glimpse of what we do.
But clearly we do not carry out our mission alone.
We cooperate with other government partners,
combining our resources to accomplish even more for the public good.
And we want your help too
your comments and ideas
on how we can do even better.
Our website is a good place to start.
Thank you.