A recent report released by an auditor shows that current state health care programs for the poor are mismanaged on a criminal level due to possible corruption and outright laziness. This is what you must expect from a state government agency. These are bureaucrats who have no interest in helping the poor but rather in keeping their own jobs and fat pensions. This is another reason for having programs like this managed by charities rather than the government.
Some examples of the wastes include:
- Households with incomes of as much as $295,000 receiving state-sponsored health care intended for low-income families
- Beneficiaries who failed to report all of their income on NJ FamilyCare applications
- There are participants who never filed annual renewal applications, as required by law, probably costing the state up to $43.1 million
- The state failing to try to collect $4.6 million owed to NJ FamilyCare by 16,300 people
- A failure by the state to monitor equipment providers, probably costing New Jersey hundreds of thousands of dollars.
- the state sent as many as three blood pressure monitors to Medicaid patients, when in many cases those devices are warrantied and replaced for free by drugstore chains. The unnecessary cost? A potential $100,000.
- New Jersey picked up the bill for $2.1 million in medical equipment that was supposed to be paid for by nursing homes.
- New Jersey spent $6.7 million more in state and federal dollars than was required to rent oxygen equipment and buy adult incontinence briefs.
- The state spent $8,181 on a wheelchair that should have cost $5,705?
The total amount of money that was wasted in the NJ FamilyCare program? I'll try to find out but there is so much that it may take awhile. And this is the program that Joseph Vitale wants to expand.
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