{"id":541454,"date":"2026-03-24T02:02:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T02:02:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/541454\/"},"modified":"2026-03-24T02:02:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T02:02:08","slug":"why-kathy-hochul-ny-dems-fear-questions-about-medicaid-fraud","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/541454\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Kathy Hochul & NY Dems fear questions about Medicaid fraud"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gov. Kathy Hochul denounces the federal probes of New York\u2019s Medicaid outlays as politically motivated, but Empire Center health expert Bill Hammond lays out state Democrats\u2019 political motives for squelching any investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe governor and other top state officials rely heavily on political support \u2014 and campaign donations \u2014 from Medicaid-funded health-care interests,\u201d notes Hammond.<\/a><\/p>\n

In other words, US Medicaid czar Dr. Mehmet Oz\u2019s search for Medicaid fraud<\/a> could kill their golden goose.<\/p>\n

New York\u2019s vast Medicaid spending is a big fat target for fraudsters<\/a>: As Hammond notes, it\u2019s the nation\u2019s most costly Medicaid program, shelling out $4,492 per state resident in 2024 \u2014 77% more than the national average and 24% more than No. 2 spender Kentucky \u2014 partly because it offers benefits far above the poverty line.<\/p>\n

Now look at how that money is spent, and who it benefits.<\/p>\n

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The state\u2019s Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, funding home care aides, has shot up to nearly $15 billion a year, as these aides \u201cnow outnumber the combined total of retail clerks and fast-food counter workers\u201d in New York.<\/p>\n

And Hochul\u2019s bid to \u201creform\u201d it is being probed for bid-rigging<\/a> of the contract with Public Partnerships LLC, the company Hochul hired to oversee CDPAP in the name of cost control.<\/p>\n

New York also uses hundreds of millions of Medicaid dollars to subsidize health insurance for SEIU 1199 members; other grants fund lobbying for more Medicaid spending.<\/p>\n

And some cash goes to \u201cpolitically connected\u201d groups that don\u2019t even pretend to provide direct care for patients: E.g., Somos Community Care \u2014 which offers back-office services to physicians but gets tens of millions in Medicaid cash \u2014 has funneled $51 million in \u201cconsulting fees\u201d to \u201cHenry Munoz, a former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee with\u00a0no previous background in health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, nursing homes that seem to barely break even simultaneously pay tens of millions for services and rent to firms with \u201cthe same or overlapping\u201d ownership.<\/p>\n

And the state barely tries to ferret out Medicaid corruption.<\/p>\n

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The main investigator is the Medical Fraud Control Unit in the state Attorney General\u2019s Office: From 2020 through 2024, reports Hammond, it completed an average of just eight probes per billion dollars spent \u2014 \u201cthe third lowest among the 50 states\u201d and 63% below the US average.<\/p>\n

And now the Democratic-controlled state Senate is pushing \u201creforms\u201d to \u201carguably hamstring\u201d the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General, which can audit hospitals, nursing homes and other care providers.<\/p>\n

A lot of beaks are dipped in the state\u2019s Medicaid pool \u2014 and New York\u2019s political class wants to keep it that way.<\/p>\n

Federal investigators can\u2019t dig fast, or deeply, enough. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Kathy Hochul denounces the federal probes of New York\u2019s Medicaid outlays as politically motivated, but Empire Center…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":541455,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[16676,1340,37948,12,10533,6884,55933,97,252,253,28861,49710,1341,1767,5599,172023],"class_list":["post-541454","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-attorney-general","tag-congress","tag-corruption","tag-donald-trump","tag-editorial","tag-fraud","tag-government-spending","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-kathy-hochul","tag-letitia-james","tag-medicaid","tag-opinion","tag-public-health","tag-seiu-1199"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541454","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541454"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541454\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/541455"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541454"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541454"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541454"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}