Colorado, under Republican governance, was long a much-desired destination for many Americans. No longer. As is so often the case everywhere, under Democrat rule it has become the People’s Republic of Colorado, and all the miseries of any socialist/communist state are becoming increasingly manifest. I still have relatives living there—never mind who or where, exactly—and they’re keeping a very close eye on continuing Democrat usurpations of liberty and increasing revelations of fraud and mismanagement.
Read more Another new ‘trend’ emerges: Blacks use AI to pretend they’re urinating on Austin Metcalf’s grave
It seems Colorado is working, perhaps from a bit behind, to surpass Minnesota and California in the fraud sweepstakes:
Graphic: X Post
Colorado’s Medicaid program made more than 220,000 payments to health care providers on behalf of people who were dead, according to a federal investigation that says the state overcharged the federal government more than $6 million.
Colorado made the monthly payments on behalf of nearly 9,000 people who were deceased but still enrolled in the Medicaid program, according to a report released this month by the Office of Inspector General in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
What is it with dead people anyway? Is there something about passing to the afterlife that transmogrifies people into Democrats and enables them to cross the River Styx to vote and receive entitlements? Or are Democrats so powerfully bonded to entitlement fraud they’re able in death to continue to affect the systems of the living?
The state paid $7.8 million from 2018-2020 for health care for 4,003 people whose dates of death were not recorded in the state computer system and $5.1 million for 4,837 people whose death dates were recorded in the state system, the watchdog agency found. The money for those payments came from a mix of federal and state dollars.
In sum, Colorado overcharged the federal government at least $3.8 million for the payments to dead enrollees, and $2.2 million for other incorrect reimbursements the state received from the federal government, alleges.
Note that this was only discovered through a federal audit. Apparently, Colorado doesn’t do that sort of thing, perhaps because Colorado bureaucrats are not capable, or they think it beneath them? Oh, this is interesting:
The audit was conducted from August 2021 through October, during the Biden administration and before President Trump fired more than a dozen inspectors general across various government departments.
Let me guess: the Bidenites buried it until it was discovered and resurrected by the Trump II Administration. Bad luck for Colorado.
The feds used Social Security data to discover the dead 9000, but Colorado claims that data is unreliable, so there. It’s apparently more reliable than Colorado’s– assuming they have any. So, how did this happen?
Read more The SPLC dodges and deflects
Colorado made the “unallowable” payments on behalf of enrollees who had died “because it did not have adequate controls” and had subpar policies and procedures, federal auditors wrote. “Among other factors, for a portion of our audit period the state agency did not have an automated system to verify dates of death,” they said.
Besides payments for the dead, Colorado overreported $2.2 million in other Medicaid expenditures to the federal government. The errors occurred because the state failed to make sure its fiscal data vendor accurately reported information, and the state used some duplicate data, the audit report said. State officials found the other errors, which were outside the scope of the audit, and reported them to federal auditors.
The feds want Colorado to pay back $6 million. Colorado won’t:
States are supposed to confirm that enrollees are dead.
That sounds, um, reasonable.
“The OIG did not independently perform such outreach to presumed deceased members, so the department determines their work to be inadequate,” Colorado Medicaid spokesperson Trish Grodzicki told The Sun via email.
“The department has many control processes to verify that individuals have died and is constantly working to enhance these controls,” she said.
If there is a pay back, Grodzicki said, it will take two to three years to negotiate with the federal government.
What’s to negotiate? This seems pretty simple. Colorado wasn’t supposed to pay dead people. They did pay dead people using federal taxpayer dollars. The taxpayers want their money back. Sounds reasonable and fair. It sounds like what Colorado is doing is trying to delay in the hope Democrats will seize the government in January of 2029 and forget the whole thing.
We’re now told Social Security recipients are facing 22% payout cuts by 2032 if the trust fund isn’t shored up. That six million—and other millions and billions from other blue states–might come in handy, even for citizens of the People’s Republic of Colorado.
Become a subscriber and get our weekly Friday newsletter with unique content from our editors. These essays alone are worth the cost of the subscription.
Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, lifelong athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer, and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.
Read more Slow down the Faster Labor Contracts Act