The Medicare program has mistakenly spent at least $3.1 million to give free Viagra and other erectile-dysfunction drugs to senior citizens, in a move that violates federal law.
According to a report released Monday by auditors for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Medicare made the payouts in 2007 and 2008, in violation of a 2005 law specifying that the program could not cover the cost of such drugs.
The figure is a tiny percentage of the $133 billion that Medicare spent on legitimate prescription drugs in the same time period.
Medicare administrators blamed the payments on a computer error and acknowledged that there had been similar illegal payments in 2009 and 2010.
The report recommended that the Medicare program try to recover some of the money from pharmaceutical companies who furnished the drug.
Medicare told the HHS inspectors that they would fix the computer glitch.
