New YorkBy Kenneth Lovett
Daily News Albany Bureau Chief
Tuesday, December 22nd 2009, 2:43 PM
ALBANY - New York's Medicaid program squandered $92 million in overpayments, billing errors and waste, three new audits found.
State Controller Thomas DiNapoli said Tuesday his office has stopped or recovered $20 million of the improper payments.
One of the new audits found the state Health Department made more than $53 million in improper payments for nearly 26,000 recipients who had multiple Medicaid identification numbers.
While the department acknowledged the improper payments, it is only seeking to recover $2.4 million of the $53 million, DiNapoli said.
"This is not the time to be wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and doing nother to recover $50 million," DiNapoli said.
"Our audits keep finding that the safeguards designed to detect waste, raud, and abuse have failed over and over again."
DiNapoli called on the Department of Health to increase scrutiny of the program.
