Waste and Fraud: The Other White Meat

While this may not come within the purview of pork, the sheer amount of waste and fraud in the New York State Medicaid system is astounding. More than $18 billion is wasted annually. That's considerably more than the waste and fraud relating to UNSCAM.

Their aides testified Monday at Assembly hearings called after The New York Times ran a two-part, 9,000-word series in July suggesting as much as $18 billion a year — some 40 percent of state Medicaid expenditures — were being lost to fraud and abuse.

Roll that off your tongue again: $18 billion. Each year.

And the media is characteristically silent. That's $18 billion that can't go to rebuild Ground Zero, build new schools, upgrade and maintain roads, build a Second Avenue Subway line, expand the Javits Center, or build the High Line park without federal funds. Or, that money could go towards debt relief and lower the costs of doing business in the state.

This is an amount that is wasted on an annual basis. Do the math - throw in interest and debt relief on top and we're talking a spectacularly huge amount. Yet, there doesn't seem to be any interest in curbing the waste and abuse from anyone in State Government. Why? We're talking about $100 billion within five years.

New York State doesn't have that kind of money to simply throw away, and yet no one is sounding the alarm within the Legislature, the Governor's office, the Attorney General's office, or even the Comptroller's office. Why? Are they asleep at the wheel? Do they think that this is a problem that cannot be solved?

At the hearing, officials claimed the Times' series exaggerated the situation.

OK: Maybe the state hasn't lost $18 billion a year.

Maybe it only lost $15 billion.

Or $10 billion.

No matter. Even at $10 billion, over the course of Pataki's 101/2 years as gov, that would be $105 billion in all — the size of this year's entire state budget.

Okay, let's take that lower figure of $10 billion or even $5 billion a year. That's a princely sum of money to simply write off when there are many pressing needs that could be addressed with the money. It could fix the school funding formula without needing to raise new taxes.

What this suggests is that the Medicaid system in New York needs to be overhauled in a serious and thoughtful way. The costs to the state have spiraled out of control over the past decade, in part because of concessions to the health care unions, which does little to improve health care delivery but helps deliver votes on election day.

Fighting waste, fraud, and corruption within the Medicaid system must be a priority for the next Governor if they want to keep New York competitive with the rest of the country and the world. Eliminating the waste and fraud will make New York's costs of doing business go down, and improve competitiveness. Yet, no one appears capable or willing of taking on that challenge.

Technorati: porkbusters; waste; and fraud.