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 The study released today by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, identified more than 417,000 such prescriptions paid for by Medicare’s prescription drug program in 2009. For instance, 24 doctors wrote more than 400 prescriptions for at least one patient, including refills dispensed. Carper chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which has scheduled a hearing Monday about prescription abuse in the Medicare program, known as Part D. 
 
 The inspector general's report focused on the prescribing of nearly 87,000 general-care physicians, such as family practitioners and internists, in urban and suburban areas in 2009. “We don’t have the money in Medicare to be wasting for this area.” 
 
 Carper’s panel has scheduled a hearing this afternoon on prescription abuses in the program, which cost the government $62 billion last year. The new report from the inspector general is the latest to find oversight problems in Part D. Previous reports found that insurers have paid for prescriptions from doctors who were barred by Medicare or whose identities were unknown to insurers or Medicare.  The Prescribers What Doctors Are Prescribing 
 
 More than 700 doctors nationwide wrote prescriptions for elderly and disabled patients in highly questionable and potentially harmful ways, according to a critical report of Medicare's drug program released today. In its response to the study, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) said some of the examples cited by the report may be due to weaknesses in the federal database relied upon by the inspector general. “We have already launched several efforts to address these vulnerabilities, such as an intervention program in an area of high drug abuse and better data analyses to detect patterns of fraud and abuse,” an agency spokesman said in an email to ProPublica.
– Massage therapists and home contractors are not authorized to prescribe drugs—but Medicare will still cover the cost, anyway. That's according to a new study by the Department of Health and Human Services, which found Medicare paid $31.6 million in 2009 as part of its Part D program for 30,000 prescriptions written by people who ... can't actually write prescriptions, ProPublica reports. People like nutritionists, opticians, art therapists, vets, and interpreters, it says in the report. Given many of the drugs prescribed, such as painkillers, are easily abused, the department's inspector general found the error isn't just dangerous, but "may also contribute to the prescription drug abuse problem in our nation." The news comes just days after the inspector general released another report identifying over 700 doctors in the US with " question able prescribing patterns," ProPublica reports. In one case, a doctor had prescriptions filled in 872 different pharmacies in 47 states and Guam. In another, Medicare paid $9.7 million in one year for the scripts of a single doctor—151 times the average.