A doctor in Los Angeles is accused of being responsible for $23 million in losses alone, after he prescribed 1,000 power wheelchairs that were not medically necessary and in some cases weren’t even delivered to patients. People in three Texas cities were arrested for allegedly coaching patients so that they could get doctors to prescribe unneeded drugs.

Medicare’s prescription-drug program is a common target for fraud, it turns out. A 2013 investigation by ProPublica and NPR focused on the program. Reporters looked into the case of Ernest Bagner, a psychiatrist in whose name millions of dollars of drugs were prescribed. Bagner claimed his identity had been stolen and used to acquire the drugs, and while authorities weren’t convinced that his story was true, Medicare also never restricted his ability to prescribe drugs through the program.

While Thursday’s bust may be exceptionally large in scale, it isn’t unusual in type. Looking back through government news-release archives shows similar announcements: $260 million in false billing, including 27 doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, here; $223 million in false billing, again involving doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, there.

Are these numbers huge or tiny? Maybe both. It’s hundreds of millions of dollars, but it’s also only a fraction of the total estimated fraud, which runs into the tens of billions of dollars. It’s probably around 10 percent of the annual Medicare budget, which is more than $500 billion. And that’s still a tiny fraction of the overall federal budget.

A couple years ago, Slate’s Josh Levin investigated the origins of the welfare-queen myth, tracing it to a real figure, Linda Taylor. What Levin found was that Taylor’s story was far weirder than simply bilking the system—that might have been the least of her crimes. Despite being a singularly bizarre figure, the idea that there are hundreds of Linda Taylors out there making money off the safety net is a powerful political force. And that makes fraudulent schemes like the ones Lynch alleged today all the more pernicious. Not only are doctors who rip the system off stealing from taxpayers, they’re reshaping public opinion in ways that harm the people who truly need health care.