Say Anything Blog

The Associated Press sums up the problems:

The audits, which come with state struggling to pay for health care for the poor and uninsured, found:

, Some beneficiaries failed to report all income on NJ FamilyCare applications. Applicants authorize the program to match applications with their tax return, but the state isn’t checking all tax files, allowing people with incomes of $295,000, $186,000 and $177,700 to enroll.

, About 13,000 NJ FamilyCare participants weren’t sent renewal applications, though regulations require eligibility be determined annually. The audit found $43.1 million was paid to these participants from July 2005 to September without knowing if they remain eligible.

, The state failed to try to collect $4.6 million owed to NJ FamilyCare by 16,300 people.

, The state paid $2.1 million from July 2005 to December for medical equipment that should have been paid for by nursing facilities.

, The state is failing to monitor medical equipment providers. For example, it found a provider billed the Medicaid program $30,000 for 48,000 adult incontinence briefs, though the audit found only 10,000 briefs were purchased. Auditors said they’ve referred this and other examples to state criminal investigators.

, The state isn’t properly calculating Medicaid reimbursements. For instance, auditors found the state paid $8,181 for a wheelchair that should have cost $5,705.

, The state spent $6.7 million in state and federal money more than was needed to rent oxygen equipment and buy adult incontinence briefs.

, The state, from July 2005 to December, sent as many as three blood pressure monitors to Medicaid patients, even though many come with warranties and are replaced for free by drug store chains. The audit found the state could have saved $100,000 by denying these claims.

“The audit’s findings are very troubling,” said Assemblyman Richard Merkt, R-Morris. “They call into serious question the state’s competence to run health insurance programs.”

You can say that again, yet even with cautionary tales like the one above the Democrats still want to pour more money into this program and even expand it to include more and more Americans to the point where we’re all covered by it.  Or at least paying for it, whether we like it or not.

But I ask: What does forcing Americans to sign up and/or pay for crappy, government-run health care have to do with freedom? 

Not much, as far as this observer can tell.