It's still early days, and no one really knows what impact the sequester cuts will have on the economy, but I recently talked to a few health care experts who all agreed that the cuts have the potential to do serious harm to federal health care anti-fraud efforts. Lewis Morris, an attorney with Adelman, Sheff & Smith LLC and a former chief counsel at the OIG, told me that sequester cuts could lead to employee demoralization and even convince professionals to forego a career in government. Morris told me that the cuts could also lead to delays in resolving fraud cases.

Louis Saccoccio, the chief executive officer of the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association, told me that he's already seeing some signs of the sequester's impact on anti-fraud. His association provides education and training programs open to anti-fraud investigators from the FBI and OIG, and he said both agencies are already cutting back on their attendance.