Audit Finds New York Paying For Medicaid Benefits Of Former State Residents

Main Category: Medicare / Medicaid / SCHIP
Article Date: 06 Aug 2008 - 8:00 PST

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New York state spent $30 million providing Medicaid services to nearly 30,000 former New York City residents between November 2006 and November 2007 who had moved outside the state, according to an audit by the state Comptroller's Office, the New York Post reports. Auditors, using federally developed computerized record checks in 44 states, found that 13,000 former city residents "should have been investigated" for violations of New York's Medicaid regulations but the city's Human Resources Administration investigated 207 cases in that 12-month period.

The audit found that the state Medicaid program is "making inappropriate payments on behalf of recipients residing and enrolled in other states' Medicaid programs" and that there are "no efforts to recover the inappropriate payments." A New York state Health Department official said that the audit, which has not been publicly released, is "a totally devastating study which shows that there are no real meaningful controls on who is getting Medicaid," and that the findings are "the tip of the iceberg" of former resident Medicaid abuse (Dicker, New York Post, 8/4).

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