True oversight takes an awful lot of time. To implement complete oversight  takes a tremendous amount of insight.

Does it take Full Time Legislators to get this done? One might ask that question. With the 2010 mess the Executive has dealt the people and with a Veto Proof Rubber Stamp Legislature it will be a task to just get ANYTHING on the agenda let alone implemented…

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Comptroller: $92 million in Medicaid overpayments, errors found

By CARA MATTHEWS • Journal Albany Bureau • December 22, 2009

ALBANY _ State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli announced today that auditors found up to $92 million in Medicaid overpayments, billing errors and other problems. He called on the state Health Department to step up scrutiny of the program and recover the money.

In one of three audits from DiNapoli, a Medicaid recipient in Poughkeepsie was found to have received taxi service that cost about $300 a day, five days a week, to visit her child at a long-term care facility in Albany. There was no medical reason for the trips, but Dutchess County approved them and $196,000 was paid out between July 28, 2006 and April 3 this year, DiNapoli said.

“The safeguards designed to protect the taxpayers by detecting waste, fraud and abuse keep failing, and that’s really the main point of these audits. We need to tighten up our supervision of the Medicaid program,” he said.

Given the state’s fiscal crisis, “now is not the time to waste or lose out on an opportunity to recover tens of millions of taxpayer dollars,” DiNapoli said.

Health Department spokeswoman Claudia Hutton said not all claims are as simple as they are portrayed by the comptroller, and the “route to recoup the funds is likewise complex,” she said.