Government theft...

Medicaid Fraud in the Billions

Bob Adelmann

The response to the admission by Deputy Director for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Penny Thompson, made in September before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and chaired by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), that payments made by the federal government to New York’s state-run development centers were “excessive and unacceptable,” was simple and to the point: those overpayments were “inexcusable” and “exceeded the entire Medicaid budgets of 14 states” and added that “the failure … suggests an institutional failure and a pattern of irresponsible actions that have cost the taxpayers billions.”

The amount, just in New York, is estimated by Issa’s committee to be in excess of $15 billion, equivalent to $1.9 million per patient per year!

Using the bureaucratic shuffle which Thompson has no doubt refined in her 20 years as a top-level bureaucrat for Medicare and Medicaid, she admitted:

The growth of the daily Medicaid reimbursement rate for [New York] State’s developmental centers has significantly outpacedthose of privately operated developmental centers and New York claimed significantly more for the State-run developmental center services than its actual costs. (emphasis added)

The daily rate for a Medicaid beneficiary to reside in a developmental center grew from $195 per day in 1985 to $4,116 in 2009,vastly outgrowing the Medicaid daily rate for private developmental centers. (emphasis added)

Simply put, bureaucrats in New York have been milking the system for decades, but Thompson claims she just found about it a few months ago. Here’s more from her report to Issa’s committee:

CMS did not begin working with New York to address the situation fully until 2010. Since then, CMS has been working with the State to understand the circumstances around the inflated rate and more fully address this problem...

Read more:
http://thenewamerican.com/usnews/health-care/item/13146-medicaid-fraud-in-the-billions