Cuomo and Medicaid Fraud
One thing not mentioned at Andrew Cuomo's swearing-in ceremony yesterday was the issue of Medicaid fraud, which I seem to remember being a pretty big deal around the beginning of the attorney general race.
Cuomo's spokeswoman, Wendy Katz, said confirmed that Cuomo is planning to do something fairly dramatic about it by creating a position of deputy attorney general for Medicaid fraud. Although the attorney general's office already has a solicitor general Medicaid Fraud Control Unit to tackle that issue, she said, the new position will reflect "an increase in prominence."
She didn't say who might fill the position or when it might come into being.
Cuomo perviously addressed the issue when he penned an op-ed article explaining that New York is losing 20 percent of money it recovers from Medicaid fraud because it doesn't have its own False Claims Act to protect whistle blowers.
-- Azi Paybarah
The position of Deputy Attorney general in charge of the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has existed in that name since 1979, although it was originally created on January 10, 1975 to investigate crimes involving nursing homes. (It became "the medicaid fraud control unit" at the urging of its first occupant, Charles J. Hynes, now the Kings County District Attorney). Mr. Hynes, by the way was appointed by Attorney General Louis J. Lefkowitz at the behest of Governor Carey and his Secretary of State, Mario M. Cuomo.
If Cuomo is right and we're losing 20% per Medicaid case, then Charlie Rangel needs to get involved. The feds will just laugh at us if he tries to re-jigger the Medicaid formula to help New York when the state is lowering its own effective Medicaid reembursement rate by not having a False Claims Act.