Federal Reports

The Office of Inspector General examined the status of NASA’s environmental remediation activities at SSFL and assessed the extent to which the Agency is conducting these efforts in a cost-effective manner.

The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA) prohibits CMS from awarding a Competitive Bidding Program contract to a supplier of diabetes test strips if the supplier's bid does not cover at least 50 percent, by volume, of the types of diabetes test strips provided to Medicare beneficiaries. This is known as the "50-percent rule." MIPPA requires OIG to determine the market shares of the types of diabetes test strips before each round of competitive bidding to assist CMS in ensuring that bidding suppliers meet the 50-percent rule. Initially, compliance with the 50 percent rule was assessed using mail order claims only. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 amended the 50-percent rule by requiring that, for bids on or after January 1, 2019, CMS must use data from the non-mail order Medicare market as well as the mail-order one. Since 2010, OIG has been conducting evaluations of the Medicare market shares of diabetes test strips provided via mail order. This is the first OIG evaluation of Medicare market shares for diabetes test strips provided via non-mail order.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Office of Inspector General (OIG), assisted the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York in a civil investigation of Gateway Funding Diversified Mortgage Services, LP, now known as Finance of America Mortgage, LLC (FAM).  Gateway was a Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-approved mortgage lender.  On May 31, 2015, FAM’s parent company acquired Gateway.  FAM has its principal place of business in Horsham, PA.On December 7, 2018, FAM entered into a settlement agreement with the Federal Government to pay $14.5 million to avoid the delay, uncertainty, inconvenience, and expense of lengthy litigation.  As part of the settlement, FAM agreed that Gateway engaged in certain conduct and omissions related to FHA-insured mortgages in connection with its origination and underwriting of single-family residential mortgage loans insured by FHA.  The settlement agreement was neither an admission of liability by FAM nor a concession by the United States that its claims were not well founded.As a result of Gateway’s conduct and omissions, HUD insured loans approved by Gateway that were not eligible for FHA mortgage insurance under the direct endorsement program and that HUD would not otherwise have insured.  HUD incurred substantial losses when it paid insurance claims on these loans.  Of the total $14.5 million settlement, HUD FHA received $7.23 million, and the remaining $7.27 million was paid to other Federal entities and the relator.

Seek link below for the full report, report summary, multimedia or any agency follow-up.

While costs in general are expected to increase over time due to inflation, there were other factors that put downward pressure on the Postal Service’s transportation costs. Namely, the overall decline in mail volume and the reduction in First-Class Mail service standards. This led us to wonder how much costs should have been expected to change in response to two things: (1) the overall change in mail volume, including the decline in letters and flats and the increase in parcels; and (2) the overall change in transportation-related input costs, including fuel and driver wages. The OIG found that almost 40 percent of the increase in transportation costs over the last ten years cannot be explained by these two factors alone.