The Department of Health cannot verify over a million people on Medicaid.

0:00 Speaker 1 Sunday Morning with us is Senator George Burrello from from the well West side of New York State and Senator tell us give us an update of what things are bothering you guys over there all the way to the west.

0:16 Speaker 2 Well, I think that’s the same problems everywhere across New York State are are plaguing us. You know, I hear a lot of handring on the part of our governor and my Democrat colleagues about cuts from the federal government.

0:28 Then certainly I understand that there’s a lot of there’s billions of dollars that flow to New York State, and what we’re hearing in my district and across the state is what are you doing about this? But the reality is the question is what is Governor Kathy Hochel and the Democrats in charge doing about it? Then the answer

0:45 is really nothing. You know, right now, the federal government spends about it borrows about two trillion dollars a year to balance its budget, and it’s subsidizing waste, fraud and abuse in the medicaid program in pretty much every state, but New York is probably among the worst. Uh. If you look at a report from the Empire Center that’s

1:04 called Medicaid’s Missing Million, where they foiled the qualifications for everyone on Medicaid. Keep in mind, forty four percent of New Yorkers are now on Medicaid. That’s an astounding number that that many New Yorkers, nearly half are on Medicaid.

1:17 And the fact that there is probably there are several million that are on Medicaid. And yet there are a million that the Commission of Medicaid, after they were sued by the Empire Center, could not verify exist and are actually qualified for Medicaid that you know, the most lucrative medicaid program in the nation. They estimate that just that alone,

1:37 those million people could be costing New Yorkers twenty billion dollars a year. So if Governor Hochel would.

1:43 Speaker 1 Just address one second, one second, Senator, I got to stop you sure, sure they can’t verify that a million people that are getting paid exist.

1:53 Speaker 2 That’s correct. There are there are a million people that are on Medicaid that the Medicaid Office, part of the Department of Health, cannot verify actually exist and are qualified to collect Medicaid.

2:07 Speaker 1 Wow, and I got doctors calling me to complain that about the bill and New York State can’t verify a million people are getting paid and wasting in stealing, stealing, I’m not gonna say was stealing tax payer.

2:23 Speaker 2 Money, that’s correct, you know. And they want to talk about, well, you know, it’s undocumented immigrants, and that may be some of it, but the reality is most of it is probably scam artists that are billing Medicaid for services that aren’t being provided, people that have died that are steal in the system, people that have moved out of state

2:40 or just no longer need Medicaid benefits. That’s probably what most of those millions are. So just a little bit of due diligence and the part of the people in all buty. We could eliminate that. In the meantime, we’re looking at hospitals that don’t get enough Medicaid reimbursement for services that they provide, nursing homes that don’t get enough money.

2:57 There’s a huge scam program. It’s called called Medicaid Non emergency transportation. This is where we have taxi drivers taking people to doctor’s appointments, non emergency doctor appointments that are on Medicaid. That has become a huge multi billion dollar scam, and right now the Attorney General has indicted a few of these companies. But essentially you have taxi drivers and

3:18 for example, city like Buffalo in Western New York driving down to my district in rural western New York to pick up one person to go to an appointment, and that taxi driver is getting paid three or four hundred dollars.

3:29 Typically those appointments are, you know, drug treatments. There’s all kinds of crime that’s going on in where the taxi drivers have been caught taking some of these patients to buy drugs on the way to or from their drug treatment.

3:43 It’s just absolutely filled with waste fraud abuse. And of course the transportation brokers that have been hired by the governor are big donors to her campaign, so the fraud runs deep. If you want to if you want to eliminate the threat of the custom the federal government, it’s time for New York State to address the waste fraud

4:02 abuse in our medicaid program.

4:05 Speaker 1 Well, I mean, we need a doze officer to every state that gets federal money to make sure they’re not wasting it, because it seems like the Blue states, especially, we’re getting unlimited amounts of whatever they need. And guess what it was going It was going to old fifty states, the old fifty states, and the deficit was going up, up,

4:32 up up. How do you do? He say it up up and.

4:35 Speaker 2 The way exactly. And let me tell you this, there’s no reason why future generations should be paying for the borrowing that is taking place from the federal government to pay for irresponsibility in blue states like New York. And that’s what’s going on. And that’s essentially what President Trump is trying to eliminate. And I think that’s a responsible

4:54 thing to do.

4:56 Speaker 1 That is a wow, And that is shocked. A million people collecting that may not exist. That’s almost as bad, or if not worse than I guess there’s some people collecting Social Security that were one hundred and fifty years out.

5:14 Speaker 2 Exactly.

5:14 Speaker 1 You know that.

5:15 Speaker 2 Look, the bottom line is easy to spend other people’s money. It’s time for us to realize that it’s our money and we’re borrowing against the future for our children and grandchildren, and it has to stop. Enough is enough?

5:26 Speaker 1 Well, anything else you want to tell our listeners On a Sunday morning, I.

5:32 Speaker 2 Would just say thank you once again. For bringing this voice forward so people know and I would say keep the safe. I think we can save New York if we band together, common sense folks. We can restore balance to a New York state government.

5:44 Speaker 1 Thank you so much, and we’ll catch up with you again real soon. Thank you,