WASHINGTON DC (October 2, 2019) — Senate Finance Committee Chairman Charles "Chuck" Grassley (R-IA) sent a letter to Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Seema Verma seeking information on Medicaid payments being made on behalf of deceased beneficiaries.
“Recent reports by two government watchdog agencies suggest that multiple state Medicaid agencies have made payments to managed-care organizations for deceased individuals, and in some cases, the improper payments continued for as long as two years after the date of death,” Sen Grassley wrote. “CMS can recoup the federal share of such payments in the event they are discovered, but almost a dozen reports by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services (OIG) suggest that multiple States struggle with this issue, and greater CMS leadership is needed to resolve it.
“I encourage the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to expand its efforts to prevent, identify, and reduce payment-risks, and enhance program-oversight to eliminate fraudulent or improper Medicaid payments for ineligible individuals.”
Sen Grassley is a leading voice on rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government. A significant portion of his oversight work focuses on the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and CMS.
Earlier this year, along with Sen Pat Toomey (R-PA), Grassley blasted CMS for more than two decades of improper payments in the Medicaid program. In April, the Senate Finance Committee released a report finding Medicaid’s supplemental payments, which total approximately $50 billion in federal-spending annually, often lack basic transparency and largely lack auditing-tools to ensure tax-payer dollars are being spent appropriately or effectively. In July, Sen Grassley highlighted a GAO report that found, among other things, in 15 states, Medicaid paid hospitals more than the total cost of care provided to Medicaid beneficiaries, resulting in inappropriately-high Medicaid payments.
Text of the letter is available HERE.
