My last column about the auditor general report that found an estimated $4.4 billion of waste, fraud and abuse in the Department of Community Health generated a lot of feedback, so I thought I’d follow up on the topic this week.
The person in charge of overseeing the department has not been replaced nor have there been any major internal controls put in place to stop the department from continuing to hemorrhage taxpayer money.  In short, the Granholm administration’s response to the auditor general’s report has been slow and wholly inadequate.
I am, however, pleased to report that lawmakers took action and approved hiring an independent controller to get this situation under control. This is a good step forward, but it’s still not enough.
According to the auditor general’s report, a large portion of the $4.4 billion lost went to paying fraudulent Medicaid claims. To the department’s credit, DCH is trying to recoup some of that lost money, but recovering losses due to false claims is extremely difficult under current law.
More than a year ago, Republican lawmakers proposed a plan to fix this problem by setting up a Medicaid Inspector General office dedicated to rooting out fraud. The Republican plan is modeled on programs in other states that have had great success. New York, for example, was able to recover more than $550 million in 2008 alone. Unfortunately, Democrats who control the House still refuse to allow a vote.
The auditor general’s report clearly demonstrates why we need to aggressively go after Medicaid fraud, which is why it is so incredibly frustrating that partisan politics prevents good ideas like this from getting signed into law. This is exactly the type of reform we need to get our state’s spending problem under control.
Failure to reduce wasteful spending means we have less money available for schools, less money for police protection and less money for roads. Failure, as I learn on a daily basis, is business as usual in Lansing.