It was created 40 years ago to provide health care for the poorest New Yorkers, offering a lifeline to those who could not afford to have a baby or a heart attack. But in the decades since, New York State's Medicaid program has also become a $44.5 billion target for the unscrupulous and the opportunistic.
New York's Medicaid program, once a beacon of the Great Society era, has become so huge, so complex and so lightly policed that it is easily exploited. Though the program is a vital resource for 4.2 million poor people who rely on it for their health care, a yearlong investigation by The Times found that the program has been misspending billions of dollars annually because of fraud, waste and profiteering. A computer analysis of several million records obtained under the state Freedom of Information Law revealed numerous indications of fraud and abuse that the state had never looked into.
ME: Whenever anyone is spending someone else's money, there is no reason to be prudent or cautious. This is the case in Medicaid fraud and other government waste. As well, when a person is essentially doling out funds, with no hands-on interest in the welfare of the poor person (supposedly) being helped, there is not motivation to insure the proper use of funds. Government programs ultimately do not help the people they are designed to help, not only because of fraud, but because bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient. Compassion for the poor might mean we need to return the responsibility for being our brother's keeper to people and take it out of the hands of bureaucrats.
Notes, snippets, and musings about what it means to be a joyfully serious Christian in a lugubriously frivilous age.
Monday, July 18, 2005
The Practical Problem with Bureaucratic Charity
.............can be seen in this New York Times report.
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