Meanwhile back at the ranch

Private insurance companies participating in Medicare have been allowed to keep tens of millions of dollars that should have gone to consumers, and the Bush administration did not properly audit the companies or try to recover money paid in error, Congressional investigators say in a new report.

In separate action, the Bush administration is vigorously pursuing money that it says is owed to insurance companies by Medicare beneficiaries. The Medicare agency has sent letters to more than 135,000 people saying they still owe premiums for prescription drug coverage provided in 2006. In most cases, the premiums were supposed to have been withheld from monthly Social Security checks, but the government withheld the wrong amounts or nothing at all.

Under a 2001 law, every federal agency is supposed to have a program for “recovering any amounts erroneously paid to contractors.”

The Bush administration told the Government Accountability Office that “general federal contract laws do not apply to the payments made under Medicare contracts.”