State Medicaid Fraud committee: newest GOP gimmick
Geez, Where has the State GOP been and to what end will this committee serve? via the D&C
ALBANY — Senate Republicans announced this week the formation of a task force to look into ways to crack down on Medicaid fraud.
The Senate Republican Task Force on Medicaid Fraud will issue recommendations before the April 1 budget deadline.
“There is no excuse for tolerating any fraud in a program that is the fastest-growing and largest single component of state and county budgets,” Senate Republican Leader Dean Skelos said in a statement.
…
Gov. David Paterson’s 2010-11 budget proposal estimated the state could collect $1.17 billion, an increase of $300 million over estimates for the current fiscal year. But Skelos said he thinks there is more to recover.”We can do much better than recovering just $300 million more in fraud,” Skelos said. “New York’s Medicaid fraud recovery is far short of what it could be and still lags behind many other states.”
As I said before the Anti-fraud office increased auditors from 400 to 575 and their budget increased from $4.8 million to $100 million and the results were a recovered of $551 million dollars in 2008. How exactly will a GOP only commission help? Oh, and budgeted to double collections from 2008?
Is Dean Skelos and his cohorts suddenly going to work part time for the medicaid fraud department? Man the phones? Data mine? Audit? investigate? No they are going to do what they do best which is work hyperpartisan and attempt to make a political issue of this new committee.
How about investigating State Senate fraud? Is this new committee getting per diem? Are the Senators getting extra pay for being on a committee? If they are how about using the per diem to fund additional investigators.
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