- New report: State Medicaid program pays $50M annually on care for ineligible patients, By Howard Fischer, June 8, 2012, East Valley Tribune: “Arizona’s Medicaid program is paying out up to an extra $50 million a year to provide care for those who are ineligible, a new report says. The study done by the state Auditor General’s Office finds a 1.1 percent error rate in cases where people were determined to qualify for the free care. Auditor General Debbie Davenport acknowledged that appears to be half of what federal officials found for Arizona in 2008, the last time the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services did its own report on the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System. That same year, Davenport said, the average error rate of the 17 states studied was 6.7 percent. But Davenport said Arizona’s 1.1 percent rate still translates to real money…”
- Medicaid fraud busters learn from experience, By Christine Vestal, June 4, 2012, Stateline: “Texas had an unusually high Medicaid orthodontics bill in 2010. At $185 million, the state was reportedly spending more than the other 49 states combined. Claims data showed that it had led the nation for three consecutive years in total dollars spent to help children with crooked teeth. Or at least that’s what state and federal regulators thought. As it turns out, Texas did not have a higher percentage of children with orthodontic needs. Nor was the Medicaid program doing a better than average job of providing dental care for the poor. Instead, a handful of orthodontists were bilking Medicaid by putting braces on thousands of children who did not require them. They were also tweaking the braces more often than recommended and keeping them on much longer than was normal…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty