Hundred of millions of dollars of missed prescription rebates.
Failing to charge late fees to delinquent providers. A whopping $1.4
billion in cost overruns and excessive payments in New York state alone.
These are the problems uncovered just this month in Medicaid, the government program that helps the poor get medical care and is essential to the future expansion of President Barack Obama's health care law.
For its widespread inability to get taxpayers the best deal possible, the Medicaid program and its supervisory agency, the Health and Human Services Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, wins this week's Golden Hammer, a Washington Guardian weekly distinction calling attention to the worst examples of waste, fraud and abuse in government.
Medicaid has long been a poster child for small government conservatives wanting to cut America's entitlement programs. But its performance has increasingly earned it distrust and frustration inside both political parties.
Take for instance a House hearing Thursday in which lawmakers were aghast to learn that that the government was spending $2 million a year per Medicaid patient to provide certain types of health care in New York via developmental centers.
"Medicaid’s spending on New York’s developmental centers alone exceeded the entire Medicaid budgets of 14 states," said Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., during a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Hard choices will have to be made on how to reduce federal spending, but ending overpayments to New York State-operated developmental centers should not be a hard choice at all," he added.
The HHS inspector general, the agency's internal watchdog, found Medicaid had allowed $1.4 billion in cost overruns and excessive costs in that state alone.
Read more: http://www.washingtonguardian.com/medicaid-headache
These are the problems uncovered just this month in Medicaid, the government program that helps the poor get medical care and is essential to the future expansion of President Barack Obama's health care law.
For its widespread inability to get taxpayers the best deal possible, the Medicaid program and its supervisory agency, the Health and Human Services Department's Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, wins this week's Golden Hammer, a Washington Guardian weekly distinction calling attention to the worst examples of waste, fraud and abuse in government.
Medicaid has long been a poster child for small government conservatives wanting to cut America's entitlement programs. But its performance has increasingly earned it distrust and frustration inside both political parties.
Take for instance a House hearing Thursday in which lawmakers were aghast to learn that that the government was spending $2 million a year per Medicaid patient to provide certain types of health care in New York via developmental centers.
"Medicaid’s spending on New York’s developmental centers alone exceeded the entire Medicaid budgets of 14 states," said Congressman Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., during a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
"Hard choices will have to be made on how to reduce federal spending, but ending overpayments to New York State-operated developmental centers should not be a hard choice at all," he added.
The HHS inspector general, the agency's internal watchdog, found Medicaid had allowed $1.4 billion in cost overruns and excessive costs in that state alone.
Read more: http://www.washingtonguardian.com/medicaid-headache
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