CBS recently reports on its show "60 Minutes" that Medicare fraud has surpassed the sale of cocaine in South Florida. The crime of choice today is stealing directly from taxpayers. No this is not Congress, they steal from us legally, it called taxation. These are real criminals biking us out of an estimate $60 billion annually.

As 60 Minutes points out:

"In fact, Medicare fraud - estimated now to total about $60 billion a year - has become one of, if not the most profitable, crimes in America.

If you want to find Medicare fraud, the first place you should look is South Florida, where 60 Minutes and correspondent Steve Kroft were told it has pushed aside cocaine as the major criminal enterprise.

It's a quiet crime - there are no sirens or gunfire. The only victims are the American taxpayers, and they don't even know they are being ripped off."

According to the 60 Minutes report, "There's a healthcare fraud industry where people do nothing but recruit patients, get patient lists, find doctors, look on the Internet, find different scams. There are entire groups and entire organizations of people that are dedicated to nothing but committing fraud, finding a better way to steal from Medicare."

What is more interesting is that according to Fortune Magazine the top 14 insurance companies made $8.61 billion in profits in 2008. Now, which is better? I will take the private insurance companies making profits, which by the way on average are 3% of earnings, than a government run healthcare program. Insurance companies would not tolerate this sort of abuse of their system.

The Weekly Standard states:

"So, the next time someone alleges that government-run health care is cheaper because of "lower administrative costs" -- a truly preposterous claim on its surface -- these numbers would be good ones to have at the ready: $60 billion in annual Medicare fraud, $8 billion in combined annual profits for America's ten largest insurance companies."

I agree, how about you?