Partisan Task Force on Medicaid Fraud Can't Hide the GOP's Unconscionable Record
Mar 8, 2010Hannon & GOP hold forum on how not to fix a problem they created
Albany, NY - March 8, 2010: After decades of inaction and obstruction, Republicans met in Albany today to profess a newfound concern over Medicaid fraud. The GOP is hoping that their partisan Task Force for Medicaid Fraud will provide a fig leaf to hide their unconscionable record on the issue, but New Yorkers will remember that Kemp Hannon, along with his Republican cronies, perpetrated a multi-billion dollar fraud against New York taxpayers while they held the reigns of power. It was through Republican inaction and outright obstruction of crucial reforms that Medicaid fraud reached its current threshold, where waste accumulates even as countless programs, senior centers, and hospitals serving our most vulnerable communities face the chopping block.
"Hannon and Senate Republicans think they can run away from their abysmal record on Medicaid fraud, but they can't hide from the billions they've cost the state," said Josh Cherwin of the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee. "This task force is nothing more than another attempt by the GOP to avoid accountability for 44 years of failed governance."
For 11 years, Senate Republicans opposed the False Claims Act (the state's whistle-blower law) despite the fact the FCA was widely recognized as the most effective measure to fight Medicaid fraud. Only after intense advocacy by Senate Democrats did Hannon and the Republicans agree to this historic reform. And almost immediately, fraud recoveries skyrocketed.
The tab Kemp Hannon and Senate Republicans left for New Yorkers to pay doesn't end with Medicaid fraud. In exchange for a complete deregulation of the HMO and pharmaceutical industry, which led to skyrocketing premiums for New York families, Senate Republicans filled their war chest with millions in campaign cash from fat-cat donors.
It's a record to run away from; no wonder Senate Republicans are trying to cover their tracks by blaming someone else for the mess they created.
The Hannon Record of Ignoring Medicaid Fraud
- Kemp Hannon, the chair of the partisan Task Force on Medicaid Fraud, previously Chaired the Health Committee for more than a decade but only now seems to have noticed fraud grew under his watch.
- Between 1997-2007 the cost of New York State's Medicaid program grew by over 110 percent, from $20.3 billion to $44.3 billion, even as proposals to establish safeguards and accountability were blocked.
- Hannon and the former Republican Majority also refused, for a quarter of a century, to adjust reimbursement formulas to healthcare providers, resulting in drastically inflated payments to hospitals for what was relatively inexpensive forms of care, washing millions down the drain.
- Only in 2006 under intense Democrats pressure, were "intensity weights" finally adjusted, for the first time since 1983, to reflect the changes in the healthcare marketplace.
- Still, Hannon and Senate Republicans continued to turn a blind eyes to the gross inefficiencies and rising costs of Medicaid, instead throwing money at a broken system.
Standing Up for HMOs, Against Families
- Republicans regularly put their best friends, HMOs and big drug companies ahead of New York's families.
- Over Hannon's last decade as Chair of the Health Committee, insurance premiums rose 7 times the rate of incomes.
- A 2007 report by health care advocacy group Families USA shows between 2000 and 2007, health insurance premiums for employer-sponsored coverage in New York rose by 80.7 percent, while median wages went up by only 11 percent - the 5th worst record in the nation.
- Senate Republicans spearheaded HMO rate deregulation efforts in Albany a decade ago, and won complete deregulation of HMO rates as of January 1, 2000.
- Since then, HMOs have been allowed to "file and use" rate increases of any magnitude, and they've taken advantage of deregulation to increase health premiums by over 80 percent this decade.
For More Information
Josh Cherwin
518.462.2867