Muda69 Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 https://www.indystar.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/03/11/indiana-nursing-home-patients-suffer-medicaid-money-diverted-hospitals/2517834001/ (Note: Story is behind a paywall) Quote Indiana received $679 million last year in extra Medicaid payments to care for vulnerable nursing home residents. That's more than any other state. More than California. More than New York. With all that money, one advocate said, Indiana should have the best nursing homes in America. It doesn’t. An IndyStar investigation found at least $1 billion in supplemental Medicaid funding meant for nursing homes has been diverted to the state’s county hospitals since 2003. The total is likely much more. It could be nearly $3 billion. To get that money, the hospitals embraced a plan pioneered by Matthew Gutwein, the chief executive of Marion County’s public health system. He has been hailed as a visionary. He balanced the budget and built a gleaming new hospital without raising taxes. But Gutwein didn’t perform a fiscal miracle. What he did is game the Medicaid system. Medicaid funding is complicated. Amid the thousands of pages of rules Gutwein's agency found an opportunity. Medicaid provides extra funding to nursing homes that are owned by local government. So two decades ago, Gutwein's agency, Health & Hospital Corp. of Marion County, began buying nursing homes, at least on paper, to qualify for those funds. Then it exploited lax federal and state rules that allowed the hospital to pocket much of the money. As early as 2005, HHC worried federal officials could view the nursing home program as “a sham.” But state and federal regulators signed off. More than 20 other county hospitals jumped in. Now, they own 93% of the state’s nursing homes and siphon off hundreds of millions of dollars, leaving Hoosiers with some of the worst nursing homes in America. .... The scheme was enabled by sloppy oversight at every level of government, IndyStar’s investigation found. The money was poorly tracked. It wasn’t tied to quality care. Millions of those dollars were stolen by private contractors. ... What a sad, sad, story. And it only highlights the utter incompetence, arrogance, and corruption that is endemic when we the people let government control much of an industry. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanteEstonia Posted March 12, 2020 Share Posted March 12, 2020 5 hours ago, Muda69 said: https://www.indystar.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2020/03/11/indiana-nursing-home-patients-suffer-medicaid-money-diverted-hospitals/2517834001/ (Note: Story is behind a paywall) What a sad, sad, story. And it only highlights the utter incompetence, arrogance, and corruption that is endemic when we the people let government control much of an industry. Or, maybe Indiana simply has a crappy government. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Muda69 Posted March 13, 2020 Author Share Posted March 13, 2020 15 hours ago, DanteEstonia said: Or, maybe Indiana simply has a crappy government. Yeah, pretty much what I said. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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