Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink and Attorney General Bill McCollum are both running for governor in the Sunshine State. So where are these two starting the finger pointing and mudslinging? Medicaid fraud, of course.
Sink recently attacked McCollum for the statistically poor job the state has done at reining in Medicaid fraud since he took office as the Attorney General. Florida spends over $3.2 billion in Medicaid fraud every year.
When McCollum was appointed, the number of fraud cases opened actually dropped by 355 since 2004. There were 372 fraud cases in 2008 and 2009, compared to 727 in 2004 and 2005.
McCollum now is deflecting the blame to the federal government.
According to the Miami Herald, McCollum sent two letters in the past year to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius requesting Florida be waived from a federal rule that doesn’t allow states to screen Medicaid claims to look for patterns of fraud.
McCollum is arguing that the law is obstructing his department from making any headway on Medicaid fraud. His request was granted late last year, but won’t become effective until the end of this year.
Sink jumped on McCollum’s excuse pointing out that other states have overcome the federal rules in the past few years. To help fight fraud, Sink proposed the creation of a Medicaid fraud inspector general and sending bills to Medicaid recipients so they can report overbilling.
Medicaid costs in Florida will reach $19 billion in 2010 and provide health insurance services to 2.8 million residents-roughly 14 percent of the state’s population.
If you thought health care issues were used as political leverage only on the federal level, you’d be mistaken.