The Bump Under The Rug Is A Pile Of Our Money

My butt is still burning. As I blogged on Friday, the "disproportionate share" case was quietly settled and swept under the journalistic rug last week. Apart from the announcement, the press coverage this morning is nil

Just what you would expect during the dog days of summer with the legislature out of session. It could not have been planned better.

As a review, over a period of several years, North Carolina hospitals over-billed Medicaid to the tune of over a half-billion dollars. The money was supposed to reimburse hospitals for un-compensated indigent care. In a "good-ole-boy" smooth move of astonishing proportions, the state simply handed the program over to a "private third-party vendor" (the Carolinas Medical Center in Charlotte) to manage. The original state audit suggested fraud.

From Raleigh to Charlotte, the connect-the-dots (who-is-connected-to-who) saga behind "disproportionate share" just reeks.

I got interested because once I connected the dots in my own case (against RMA and Randolph Hospital), I asked over and over again . . . WHERE is the money comming from to pay these outrageous "non-profit" executive/doctor salaries? Randolph Hospital is not a major medical center. And physicians in the private sector don't make this kind of money (as revealed on IRS tax returns that were illegally withheld during litigation) unless they work themselves to death. So what gives?

I still don't have a good answer. And (alas) Randolph was not one of the hospitals cited.

Where "disproportionate share" is concerned, three US Attorneys and the FBI are now all saying that no fraud was involved!?! It was simply an "accounting error" (I'd like to the see the evidence). What's more, not all of the money has to be paid back - "just" 151 million dollars.

Them's your tax dollars and mine folks. Nobody has been fired (unless you count the state Auditor who lost re-election after he brought the problem to light). And nobody is going to jail.

Bygones.

And this little ditty today (plucked off Carolina Journal On-line) was just special: The folks at CMC . . . who brought us this "accounting" fiasco . . . feel "vindicated".

Good for them.