FCA Education Amendments Work: A Brief Look at the Impact of the 2005 Deficit Reduction Act

In 2005, Senator Charles Grassley single-handedly created the modern compliance industry by including a False Claims Act (FCA) education amendment as part of the Deficit Reduction Act. That amendment requires companies doing more than $5 million in business with Medicare and Medicaid to explain to their employees how the False Claims Act works.

What happened next?

Since passage of the Deficit Reduction Act, the number of health care qui tam False Claims Act cases has dramatically increased, and so too has the amount of money recovered to the U.S. Treasury.

• 2007—199 new QT cases, $1.5 billion recovered

• 2008—231 new QT cases, $1.13 billion recovered

• 2009—279 new QT cases, $1.6 billion recovered

• 2010—383 new QT cases, $2.5 billion recovered

• 2011—417 new QT cases, $2.4 billion recovered

• 2012—415 new QT cases, $3 billion recovered

• 2013—500 new QT cases, $2.7 billion recovered

As Taxpayer’s Against Fraud Education Fund’s October 2013 study shows, the benefit to cost ratio of False Claims Act enforcement in the health care arena is now