It was 1969. Only in America could someone like myself, a grandson of poor, uneducated, Eastern-European immigrants, actually move to a town like Great Neck and be able to fulfill my life-long dream of starting my own dental practice.
About that same time, New York State introduced the Medicaid Program. In the ‘60s, it was called “welfare.” Today political correctness has labeled it an “entitlement-program.”
But, whatever it is called, indigent patients could finally receive medical and dental care. For the next 20 years, myself, as well as many other Long Island dentists, volunteered our professional services, free of charge, one afternoon each week, treating Medicaid patients and training the dental-interns at LIJ-North Shore Hospital.
Forty-five years later, Medicaid is now bankrupt and is dragging both New York City and New York State down with it. Its costs have skyrocketed and it has radically deviated from its original, safety-net, philanthropic intent. It has now been transformed into a permanent, multi-billion dollar industry. And to make matters even worse, 45 years after its inception, fraud, abuse and waste are rampant. Every week someone is doing the “perp-walk” and being led out in handcuffs.
Since 2006, New York City’s Human Resources Administration has been given the job of identifying these illegalities. Specifically targeted were pharmacies, transportation, and mental-health providers. Way to go, HRA. Clean up the mess and protect our taxpayers.
There is just one “minor” problem. Since 2006, NYC has spent $15.6 million of our tax-payer dollars on this project. Since they were investigating $25 billion dollars of Medicaid expenditures, we assumed that a great deal of fraud and wasteful spending would be uncovered.
How could they miss? Six years in the making. Okay, what did they come up with? Our top team of New York City CPAs published their report. They uncovered $11 million dollars In savings. Wait a minute. We paid them $15.6 million dollars to uncover $11 million dollars of fraud. We actually lost money by conducting these audits in the first place.
If we had let the bad guys continue stealing, we would be $4.6 million dollars ahead.
Does fraud, abuse and waste really exist? Of course. Was HRA just incompetent? What do you think?
As state Sen. Marty Goldman said: “we really didn’t get a good return on our investment.”
What an understatement.
Dr. Stephen Morris
North Hills
