Today's breakfast found me reading back to back stories in newspapers that made me forget the enjoyment of reading the morning news over a good bacon & eggs...
The Republican controlled House in Virginia voted to reject the Medicaid expansion favored by our New Democrat Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe. Yeah, that Terry McAuliffe.
Turns out over in the Virginia Senate the numbers are much tighter and in fact several Republican Senators, including my Senator Emmett Hanger, are looking to push through this "Product of ObamaCare" as soon as they can. No big surprise for the Democrat Senators for they strive and would love to be an extension and version of the Democrat Senate in Washington DC, But Senator Hanger from the Shenandoah Valley has forgotten how to listen to the people he represents while in Richmond.
We are talking Billions of dollars first coming out of the ObamaCare debacle but what happens in Virginia once this money goes away as it always does? But that was not the kicker, many of us have learned to expect something like this coming out of Hanger, and then I saw this story in the the Washington Times regarding the massive fraud in the Medicaid program exposed by recent arrests in our national capitol.... Ironically the same swamp where the "ObamaCare" package is coming from....
Federal prosecutors said Medicaid fraud has reached “epidemic levels” in the nation’s capital, as they announced charges Thursday against 25 people accused of making claims based on fake symptoms and personal home care that was never performed.
Authorities are still tabulating the alleged damage, but said one Maryland woman netted $75 million she was not entitled to and that other schemers took in millions more.
The charges, outlined in five federal indictments and local fraud charges, raise new questions about how vulnerable taxpayer-funded health entitlements are to false claims and billing.
About half the states are debating whether to expand Medicaid under President Obama’s health care law, and conservative critics in those states say the federal-state entitlement program’s cost, inefficiency and susceptibility to fraud are reasons to be wary.
She had been barred from participating in federal health care programs after her nursing license was revoked in Virginia in 2000, but prosecutors accused her of raking in $75 million from the D.C. and Maryland Medicaid programs, anyway, using another name to get back into the game.
Other problems exposed Thursday included corrupt care providers who recruited patients to fake symptoms — walking with a cane and overstating their aches and pains, for example — so they could obtain a prescription for additional care, authorities said.
Prosecutors said those patients received cash payments in exchange for saying they had received home care services. The more fraudulent hours prescribed, the greater the kickback.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/20/top-prosecutor-announces-largest-health-care-fraud/#ixzz2u5yeJrGa
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Senator Hanger. How about we hold off implementing a massive increase to the Medicaid program which is corrupt, abused, not sustainable in it's present form, and overhaul it as many House Delegates have called for? Let's think about the honest hardworking Virginia citizen that has paying his "fair share", as well as that of those abusing the system, before you sign on to this extension?...
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