>If there are physicians claiming Medicare funds by attributing toenail clipping to "tissue removal," then those physicians are behaving like a businessperson who fills their tax return with false deductions. I say "if" because Medicare bills aren't just a claim for service, you have to supply "medical necessity" diagnosis codes to justify the claim and the CPT procedure codes are specific enough to show the tissue removal is from a particular toe. Care of corns and footcare in general is excluded so even for tissue removal the physician must have asserted that you have some other condition justifying podiatric service. If physicians do this systematically as you assert, it results in a "blip" or unusual concentration of service or diagnosis codes that Medicare is adept at spotting for the purpose of Audit. The penalties for overclaiming are severe, including jail time. The scenario you describe is so brazen that I'd expect the auditors to be in like Flynn and for the physician to be trying on their new orange overalls.

OK, so we agree on that target.

Next, I'd go after the rehab mills who perform exactly the number of days and modes of rehab that Medicare will pay.
When my wife was going thru that nonsense - she couldn't walk or eat - she was on a feeding tube and barely could recognize me. They wanted to give her speech therapy because Medicare would pay for it. Fortunately I was around to ask them if it would accomplish anything and stop it when they couldn't answer me, but she was surrounded by Alzheimers suffers being subjected to that nonsense while waiting to die.

Then, I'd go after the ones who remove my earwax and call it surgery.