I didn’t make that up. Read this article from The Boston Globe–
The State of New York recently performed an in house audit of State Medicaid payments – who received them, why, etc. The audit found the agency had paid MILLIONS for services, to those who had already been deceased. How does that happen – well, the facility bills under a client name or code for services – Medicaid pays it!
The audit found that 1 nursing home collected $15,000 for a patient two years after the patient died. Overall, state tax payers were paying for medical services for 4722 deceased persons. Thats incredible!
How did all this happen – well, bureaucracy at its best – or as my grandmother used to say – the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing. There was no standard state reporting system for deaths – “One reason the state paid for dead patients is that there is no standardized way for counties to update information to the state’s Welfare Management system, according to the audit.”