The federal government paid out $125 billion in improper payments in 2014, a whopping $19 billion more in improper payments than the previous year, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.
Among the errors were improper Medicare and Medicaid payments for unnecessary treatments, tax credits to unqualified families, and unemployment benefits for people who were working, reported The Associated Press. The report found that the government-wide error rate rose from 4 percent to 4.5 percent.
Some of the payments were made due to fraud, while others were the result of overpayments and underpayments and payments made without proper documentation.
The report documented 22 involved federal agencies, but it attributed the majority of the errors to Medicare, Medicaid and the Earned Income Tax Credit, which accounted for $93 billion of the total $124.7 billion in improper payments.
Medicare paid out the most, with $45.8 billion in improper payments at a 12.7 percent error rate. Medicaid paid out $17.5 billion with a 6.7 percent error rate.
The Earned Income Tax Credit, which pays low-income families through the tax code, had $17.7 billion in improper payments with an error rate of more than 27 percent. The GAO said there were problems verifying incomes before payments were sent.
Other programs that made the top of the improper payment list include unemployment insurance ($5.6 billion), Supplemental Security Income ($5.1 billion), Social Security ($3 billion) and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program ($2.4 billion).
"This taxpayer money was not spent securing our borders, it was not spent on national defense, and it was not spent contributing to a safety net for those in need," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, told The Associated Press. "This is a problem that is going to get worse year after year if we do not get a handle on it now."
