Weekly Medicaid RoundUp: Week of August 28th, 2017

Soundtrack for today’s RoundUp pessimist readers- http://bit.ly/2goTIIy

 

For optimist readers-  http://bit.ly/2goyuuo

 

IT’S BEEN A LITTLE WHILE, PEEPS – Been running the conference marathon. Let’s do this…

 

IL COULD CUT RETRO-ELIGIBILITY- A proposal to CMS from IL HHS is asking to remove the need to pay for services up to 3 months before a member became eligible for Medicaid (for example if a health emergency hits and they can’t pay for it so they apply for retro-active eligibility). Estimates put this one at saving the state $37M. My question – does it matter if they’re not paying their bills for people who were eligible anyway? See also – IL has a multi-year, multi-Billion backlog to providers and MCOs.

 

AN ENTITLEMENT BY ANY OTHER NAME WOULD SMELL AS SWEET- The Good Guvnr LePage of the Pine Tree State (Maine) is ruffling the feathers of lefty-birds when he insists on calling Medicaid “welfare” in recent interviews. LePage continues to oppose expansion, much to the chagrin of our Progressive Overlords who know what’s best for state budgets (and of course are better, more moral people than those who care about other budget items). Here, Hear!

 

MS PROTESTS CONTINUE- The much-maligned managed care awards from the Magnolia state completed the administrative appeals process this week (with the agency affirming its decisions), but there remains a lawsuit to be dealt with. Amerigroup and True Health have raised red flags around lower scoring for some of their responses they think were very similar to winner’s responses.

  

ARMCHAIR MEDICAID PUNDITS IN D.C. SPECULATE TX MAY EXPAND CAID IN LIGHT OF HARVEY, CHANNELING RAHM’S “NEVER LET A GOOD CRISIS GO TO WASTE”- No one from TX has suggested such (yet anyway). From all the video I am seeing, Texans are pretty self-reliant. Maybe if CMS covers outboard motors under DME?

 

WELCOME BLAKE TO GA MEDICAID – GA DCH has a new director this week. Blake Fulenwider will start in his new role September 15th.

 

BE ON THE LOOKOUT FOR THE MONDAY MORNING MEDICAID MUST READS NEXT MONDAY- Absolutely incredible article about interconnected players and companies inside CMS/HHS over past 2 decades.

 

THE VOX POPULI GIVES THUMBS UP TO MEDICAID WORK REQUIREMENTS- Politico polled about 2,000 people and 51% support tie-ing Medicaid to employment and 37% opposed. Food for thought as CMS weighs a pile of waiver apps to require weekly work hours to get a Medicaid card.

  

I WILL BE AT MHPA 2017 IN OCT., WILL YOU? You can check it out here – http://bit.ly/2twCi5L Every 100th registrant will get a free Medicaid Foundations Course registration (our online training course).

FARRIS’S FANTASTIC FRAUD FOLLIES– And now for everybody’s favorite paragraph. Let’s start the ticker and see who wins this week’s award. Mark Johnson of Janesville, WI pled guilty this week to stealing $740k from Medicaid using fake scripts. Antoine Skaff of Charleston, WV pled guilty this week to stealing $700k from Medicaid and MCOs for dental procedures not actually provided and for inflating billings for procedures that did actually happen. This one also includes the crowd dental favorite – getting paid for removing the same tooth multiple times. Hin Wong of Manhattan was popped for stealing $15M from NY Medicaid, using an HIV-drug kickback scheme. Ms. Wong spent the ill-gotten gains on plastic surgery, travel and luxury goods. Godwin Oriakhi of TX will spend 40 years in prison for his role in a $17M scheme that bilked both Care and Caid using a home health kickback arrangement (kickbacks were to patient recruiters and physicians). Victor Aldeza, Regino Aldeza, Albert Aldeza, George Aldeza and Lovelyemy Libao (all 5 are siblings) of AK stole $365k from Medicaid by pretending Regino was disabled. Chandra Wrightsell of Lincoln, NE was sent up the river for using her counseling company to file 1,200 false claims. Her tab? $100k. Ms. Wong – you win this week’s award! Total taxpayer tab this week – $33.9M lost to fraud. And remember – say it with me- that’s just the ones that made the news (99% do not). This week.

That’s it for this week. As always, please send me a note with your thoughts to clay@mostlymedicaid.com or give me a buzz at 919.727.9231. Get outside (feel fall coming) and keep running the race (you know who you are).

 

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