There are many causes for our huge national debt. Here is one more: In one six-month period, Medicare wasted $100 million on unneeded power wheelchairs!
Wheelchairs help many people with mobility problems. But the U.S. Health and Human Services Department recently found that in a six-month period in 2007, 61 percent of the power wheelchairs paid for mostly by Medicare weren't medically necessary or had no documentation to show they were necessary.
Some patients got chairs that they could not even use. A Coral Springs, Fla., man told McClatchy Newspapers that the $4,500 chair he received through Medicare was too big to maneuver through his home. Now it just sits in his living room.
There are, of course, far more wasteful things in the federal government that have also contributed to our massive debt. But sadly, there just doesn't appear to be much will in Washington to get this kind of senseless spending under control.