As Republicans across America are homing in on fraud — especially in blue jurisdictions — Rep. Pat Harrigan (R., N.C.) is making sure that foreign fraud in the Foreign Medical Program (FRA) gets the attention it deserves as well.
Harrigan’s latest legislation, obtained exclusively by the Washington Reporter, is called the Foreign Medical Program Integrity and Improvement Act — and it comes after multiple warnings about abuse of the program, which has cost the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) tens of millions of dollars.
In one instance, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) noted that VA claims in the FAO more than doubled to 160,000 in just a six year period, with a particular uptick in claims based in Panama. Multiple investigations found that a single Panamanian provider was part of a fraud scheme that bilked tens of millions of dollars from the VA.
One of the causes of this fraud, Harrigan believes, is the antiquated payment processing system. The program still relies on paper checks for much of its billing, and a previous effort predating his time in Congress has been stalled for years.
His solution is to install price caps on the system, require both an IRS non-payment list review and a “Do Not Pay” list, as well as an investigation of payment patterns from countries like the Dominican Republic. Harrigan also wants to update the payment processing by allowing a third party contractor to process digital payments, while the system itself undergoes a thorough modernization.
Throughout his time in Congress, Harrigan has emerged as a leader fiscal watchdog — he previously explained that “the federal government has a fraud problem, and the American taxpayer is the one paying for it.” While Harrigan’s latest legislation has a foreign focus, he’s worked to pass legislation that would allow the Treasury Department to get “real investigative authority [and to make] sure that when taxpayer dollars go out the door, someone is actually watching where they go.”
