An audit by the State Comptroller’s Office has revealed that hundreds of dead people were enrolled in New York’s health exchange, with nearly two dozen of them enrolling after death.
Medicaid payments totaling over $300,000 were paid out to a majority of the deceased individuals.
A state audit Thursday found that New York’s health exchange enrolled hundreds of dead people at a $325,000 cost to taxpayers.
Between 2013 and 2014, the health exchange during its infancy improperly enrolled 354 deceased individuals that the state Health Department identified as active Medicaid recipients.
As a result, Medicaid inappropriately paid $325,030 in claims associated with 230 of the 354 deceased enrollees, Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said in the audit.
The Times Union is reporting that of the 354, at least “21 of those people officially enrolled after they had died.”
It’s unclear what health services were provided for those not among the living.
In all, the Comptroller’s Office noted that $3.4 million in overpayments were doled out during the first year of the program, a majority of which were a result of duplicate identification numbers.
In regards to the dead people enrolled in the exchange, the audit reads in part, “The overpayments occurred because the department did not conduct sufficient periodic verifications of enrollees’ life status to remove deceased individuals from active Medicaid enrollment.”
The Health Department claims that 321 of the 354 dead people have had their accounts officially closed.
Those same 321 will also be eligible to vote in the upcoming Democrat primaries. Okay, I just made that last part up.