Medicaid Fraud is a problem. Expanding Medicaid in NH poses the risk and likely increase in fraud and the invertible burden of its costs, which will ultimately be borne by NH Taxpayers no matter how either party spins it.
The ability of the bureaucracy to curtail fraud is limited, or it would never have become a problem in the first place, and as the program expands and contorts compliance becomes an expensive problem. That is to say, expensive to comply, and expensive to track down, identify, and prosecute fraud effectively.
Seeing as the NH AG’s office is not known for its diligence in the pursuit of fraud, except for one-off timely sound bites meant to give the appearance of enforcement, is it anything other than a matter of convenience that the New Hampshire Attorney General has just released an indictment against a New Hampshire Dentist accused of Medicaid Fraud?
A 57-year-old Manchester dentist has been indicted on 189 counts of Medicaid fraud.
The dentist, Dr. Nicholas Marshall, is alleged to have made false claims to the New Hampshire Medicaid office for procedures performed over the past five years, including oral exams, X-rays, tooth extractions and orthopedic treatment. (orthodontic treatment? or is the Concord Monitor still in need of an exam for foot in mouth disease?)
The cost of fraud is one that would weigh against Democrat and Republican efforts to expand Medicaid in NH. Maggie Hassan, the Democrat Party, Organizing for Acorn, and other out of stat left wing interests want Expansion and not just because it is part of ObamaCare.
Sure, the fact that it wont produce better health outcomes and will actually cost us more in the long run than not expanding it at all should work against expansion, but nothing says “wait one damn minute” like rampant uncontrolled fraud tainting the taste of your media flavor of choice.
Unless…
You drop a major indictment that gives the appearance of enforcement, shoring up the confidence of voters.
While the Dentist in question may be guilty, I am suspicious of anything that comes from the office of Governor Hassan’s Democrat AG.
Jim Moir, his attorney. None of the charges against him have anything to do with the level of care he has provided his patients, Moir said.
Moir said he had just learned of the indictments and was unsure of exactly what the attorney general’s office was basing its accusations on. He noted that Medicaid regulations are extremely complicated and change regularly, meaning the issue could come down to a basic misunderstanding.
A spokeswoman for the state Department of Health and Human Services, from which the Medicaid office operates, declined to comment.
We’ve heard nothing about Lorin C. Schneider, Jr., of Carver, Massachusetts since the November 22nd announcement that he had been charged with wrongful voting. Someone who never popped despite dozens of activists digging through voter roles in search of double registered out of state voters. A guy who didn’t do anything that different from the score or more of activists we uncovered whom the AG either validated out of hand or ignored altogether.
Now we’ve got Dr. Marshall, Frog marched before the media as evidence that while Fraud happens, the AG’s office is on the case, though he is not sure himself what he did wrong and the AG has not bothered to tell his lawyer yet. Law is complicated. That may take some time.
Again, odds are he is guilty of something, but then aren’t we all? In today’s moving target of what is law and what is not, a situation that Obama just makes worse with every proclamation, how could he not be guilty of something.
The question of political theater, however remains. Should we expect, a year from now, to discover that the Doctor could not be prosecuted in any meaningful way? That would make this a presentation to grease the skids for Expansion.
I wouldn’t put it past them.
I have not yet seen anything to contradict that suspicion.
