Whether it’s “phantom” patients enrolling in Obamacare, operators commandeering folk’s Medicare checks in exchange for substandard care or unscrupulous facilities offering gift cards for drug treatment enrollment, people will always find a way to game the system and shortchange those truly in need of care.

And even if fraud represents a small percentage of funding allocated to social programs, illegal activities will always garner outsized attention, which it should, so we can root it out. But let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Republicans clamor to eliminate social welfare programs, claiming taxpayers’ money is wasted on the undeserving. To them, empathy is a sign of weakness, not a virtue. Democrats will lobby to fund these programs and often ignore the oversight require

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