“Medicaid is hemorrhaging $100B on Americans ineligible for the program,” by Brian Blase, New York Post

 

Quote:

“The federal government’s improper Medicaid payments now exceed $100 billion a year. This means that more than one-in-four dollars flowing out of Medicaid — our nation’s third-largest government program — do not meet program rules. This staggering failure doesn’t just reduce health-care access for the truly eligible, it also harms taxpayers who fund it.”

LTC Comment:

This is an excellent piece by my co-author of “Nursing Homes, Coronavirus and Medicaid,” published June 1, 2020, in the Wall Street Journal. The problem of improper payments is even worse since the Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA), signed March 18, 2020, imposed maintenance of effort rules prohibiting states from terminating eligibility even for the ineligible. See Medicaid Maintenance of Eligibility (MOE) Requirements: Issues to Watch When They End, Kaiser Family Foundation, September 22, 2020, for details. Kind of makes tracking improper payments moot if ineligibility itself isn’t “improper.” Ugh!