Proof New York’s leaders are basically aiding and – Latest News
No matter how a lot public shaming they obtain, New York politicians not solely refuse to crack down on large Medicaid fraud, they appear desperate to cowl it up.
Consider The Post’s current visits to grownup day-care facilities in Flushing.
In January, The Post uncovered quite a few facilities sucking up Medicaid {dollars} whereas offering little, if any, of the providers the money is meant to pay for.
Trump Medicaid czar Mehmet Oz then visited facilities in Flushing and posted videos displaying the ludicrous quantity of them in close proximity.
On only one block alone, he pointed to “hundreds of millions of dollars of illegal profits being made from Social Adult Daycare Centers,” a ok a SADCs.
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Team Trump even threatened to carry up federal funds to the state over potential fraud.
Yet, regardless of all of the heat, when The Post’s Chadwick Moore visited these facilities final week, he discovered little modified.
Many of the 77 facilities clustered in a mere one-mile radius have been shuttered or lacked sufferers, a lot as The Post discovered six months earlier — no actual change, regardless of understanding the feds are watching.
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How a lot fraud are we right here?
Well, Flushing’s SADCs alone billed a whopping $733 million for Medicaid providers from 2018 to 2024.
Livingwell Day Care, for one, billed $27 million for 26,500 sufferers, per federal information.
Yet Moore discovered lights there dimmed and empty tables in a mess corridor; no signal of any seniors.
At Bao Kang Adult Day Care, all common areas have been likewise empty, although a employee claimed she serves up 200 people a day.
In 2018-’24, Bao Kang billed Medicaid $32 million for 43,900 sufferers.
Neither heart has been formally charged with fraud.
Medicaid-supported SADCs are purported to serve solely sufferers that suffer from a continual sickness or incapacity, but many of these Flushing amenities plainly don’t have anything past what common senior facilities offer.
Oz blasted “a lack of proper state oversight” as these “centers have become cash cows for criminal syndicates.”
Meanwhile, state pols — e.g., Gov. Kathy Hochul, Attorney General Letitia James, state Sen. John Liu (who represents the realm) — are doing their darnedest to cover the fraud.
Moore needed to get Medicaid billing information from the feds as a result of New York received’t release it publicly.
Liu tries to disclaim something in any respect is amiss: “It would be misguided to . . . paint Flushing as the epicenter of this kind of fraud, if it exists.”
If it exists?
Who are they attempting to guard? Don’t they care concerning the taxpayers footing the invoice?
Because the feds choose up over half the Medicaid tab, New York pols assume it’s free money: The more that’s billed (even through fraud), the more money flowing to the Empire State.
Except it’s flowing to criminals, and comes from taxpayers federal and state.
Apparently, most of New York’s leaders see the legal class as their natural allies.
