The Office of the Inspector General released an audit report focusing on Medicaid payments made to dead individuals with a huge price tag attached.
The report looks at previous audits of 14 states for “capitation payments“ made to enrollees after they were deceased.
Those state audits spanned July 1, 2009 through Dec. 31, 2019. The OIG found that states made an estimated $248.6 million in unallowable payments to Managed Care Organizations on behalf of deceased enrollees.
North Carolina is in the list of the 14 states, showing over $2.9 million in unallowable payments made.
The state’s individual report breaks down more details, including recommending the state refund the federal portion of $1.9 million. The full dollar figures are NC at $2,911,595, and federal share at $1,948,657.
The report for North Carolina said the state agency, the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), did not always “identify and process death information” in its systems like NC FAST and in the Medicaid Management Information System or MMIS for short.
In addition to North Carolina’s DHHS making payments to deceased enrollees, the state’s individual report found unallowable payments in prepaid in-patient plans (over $2.515M), ambulatory plans ($267,188) and all-inclusive care plans ($129,234).
In an interview earlier this month on FOX, USDA Sec. Brooke Rollins said there would be more details coming on fraud in SNAP benefit payments, which she indicated have also been going to people who are deceased.
In a later interview on Newsmax, Rollins said, “186,000 deceased men and women and children in this country are receiving a check.”