State Department

The State Department may not be recovering medical insurance benefits sent to insured employers and their families for medical expenses already paid for by the government. The three embassies GAO visited lack adequate procedures, and the State Department has no centralized accounting and monitoring systems to track overseas medical expenses to ensure that claims are filed by insured employees and dependents, reimbursements are received from insurers, and recoverable expenses are remitted to the government. As a result, the government may be losing large amounts of money.

GAO found that: (1) there is no centralized system that ensures that embassies account for and collect reimbursable medical expenses; (2) the embassies had weaknesses in their accountability for and control over medical expenses and reimbursements; (3) similar weaknesses have been identified at other embassies; and (4) there are problems in accounting for payments for medical services provided to eligible employees and dependents at medical facilities in the United States.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: