ArticleThe review of economics and statistics2025
Can Whistleblowers Root Out Public Expenditure Fraud? Evidence from Medicare.
Article in The review of economics and statistics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 4 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
4 citing papers in PubMed.
- Variation in medical claim denials: safety-net providers are hardest hit.Health affairs scholar · 2026Article
- Can Machine Learning Target Health Care Fraud? Evidence from Medicare Hospitalizations.Journal of policy analysis and management : [the journal of the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management] · 2026Article
- Ambulance Taxis: The Impact of Regulation and Litigation on Health Care Fraud.The journal of political economy · 2025Article
- MONITORING FOR WASTE: EVIDENCE FROM MEDICARE AUDITS.The quarterly journal of economics · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
This paper analyzes private anti-fraud enforcement under the False Claims Act, which compensates whistleblowers for litigating against healthcare providers who overbill the US government. I conduct several case studies of successful whistleblower lawsuits concerning Medicare fraud, pairing new legal data with large samples of Medicare claims. I estimate that deterrence from $1.9 billion in whistleblower settlements generated Medicare cost savings of nearly $19 billion, while imposing low costs on the government. These results suggest private enforcement is a cost-effective way to combat public expenditure fraud.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.