Dr. Mehmet Oz, the federal Medicaid chief, is entirely right to probe New York\u2019s bloated $124 billion spending on the program.<\/p>\n
Cost controls and fraud prevention<\/a> are anathema to the state\u2019s political establishment and the leader of that establishment, Gov. Kathy Hochul, deserves the heat. <\/p>\n As well as the scrutiny of a House investigation into Medicaid fraud<\/a> in 10 states, including New York and California.<\/p>\n New York\u2019s gargantuan health program is far too fat not to be a prime target for scammers: The state provides free health coverage to well over a third of its population (the national average is closer to a fifth), and powerful special interests \u2014 unions as well as the hospital industry and \u201csocial service\u201d-based political machines \u2014 scream at the mere suggestion that a dime of it is wasted or stolen.<\/p>\n Hochul will mention \u201cbad actors in the Medicaid program,\u201d but her actions to identify and prevent fraud are pretty murky.<\/p>\n In recent months, the Justice Department uncovered criminal fraud in the adult day care and personal care program (where Medicaid has seen explosive growth); in January, two Brooklyn fraudsters pleaded guilty to scamming $68 million<\/a> in an adult-care fraud scheme.<\/p>\n \t\t\tMore From\t\t\t\t\t\t\tPost Editorial Board<\/p>\n And Oz\u2019s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services flagged a 121% jump in spending (possibly $196 million in fraud) on non-medical transportation <\/a>services earlier this year.<\/p>\n \u201cThese cases expose ongoing program integrity vulnerabilities within the New York state Medicaid program and home and community-based service delivery system,\u201d Oz notes.<\/p>\n The feds are ramping up enforcement via CMS\u2019s Comprehensive Regulations to Uncover Suspicious Healthcare (CRUSH) initiative and the Justice Department\u2019s new Division for National Fraud Enforcement.<\/p>\n Also under the microscope: Hochul\u2019s decision to (supposedly) rein in soaring Medicaid payments under the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program by hiring outside contractor Public Partnerships LLC to manage payments to care workers.<\/p>\n Not only has that backfired by allowing monster union 1199 to enroll these workers<\/a> and inevitably start lobbying for big pay hikes, the choice of PPL itself \u2014 after the other states quit working <\/a>with the company for cause \u2014 is looking corrupt<\/a>.<\/p>\n Solidly liberal, high-cost Massachusetts spends about $3,500 per capita on Medicaid; New York state, $6,200 \u2014 with no superior health results of any kind. <\/p>\n So the Empire State would spend $50 billion less if it simply matched the Medicaid standards of \u201cthe people\u2019s republic of Taxachusetts\u201d: That\u2019s an awful lot of money going for things other than covering the health care needs of the poor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr. Mehmet Oz, the federal Medicaid chief, is entirely right to probe New York\u2019s bloated $124 billion spending…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":648300,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,98670,4691,820,3170,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,4573,67,586,132,5230,68,5621,2969],"class_list":["post-648299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-dr-oz","tag-editorial","tag-fraud","tag-medicaid","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-state-budget","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-house-of-representatives","tag-usa"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116211324323383550","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648299\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/648300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}