Medicaid Fraud in New York

New York’s Medicaid system is the largest and most expensive in the nation, with an annual budget of $44.5 billion.

Apparently, it is also the easiest to cheat. Corrupt doctors and dentists have cheated the system of billions of dollars over the years, but here is the best part; state health officials maintain that they are doing an excellent job of overseeing the program.

The evidence contradicts them, however. Among those bilking the system are a dentist, who was recently indicted for stealing more than $1 million from the program, a company that received $200 million annually to supposedly transport patients but didn’t and $1 billion in questionable speech therapy treatment for poor students who didn’t need it.

It gets better. New York Medicaid has even drawn several criminal rings that duped the program into paying tens of millions of dollars for a costly muscle-building drug intended for AIDS patients and diverted to bodybuilders. A single doctor in Brooklyn alone prescribed $11.5 million worth of the drug. Let’s not forget how New York Medicaid paid for Viagra for hundreds of sex offenders because of a federal law created under the Bill Clinton administration.

Speaking of Clinton, perhaps Senator Hillary Clinton can take time from her busy presidential campaign schedule to open an investigation into this massive fraud. After all, the folks cheated by this are many of the same people she supposedly tried to help by attempting to create the failed national health insurance as first lady.