Medicare and illegal immigrants

2014

This from the New York Times 3-4-14

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is planning new steps to prevent people in the country illegally from obtaining Medicare after finding that tens of thousands were improperly receiving benefits.

In President Obama’s budget for 2015, to be unveiled on Tuesday, and in new regulations, the administration proposes to remove illegal immigrants from the Medicare rolls and explicitly require citizenship or lawful presence in the United States as a condition of getting Medicare.

Under a 1996 law, the administration said, immigrants are generally ineligible to receive federal benefits if they are “unlawfully present in the United States.” But, officials said, many illegal immigrants have received benefits because the Medicare agency did not update its rules or policies to carry out the restrictions imposed by Congress.

What caught my eye is what I highlighted in bold. Seven years after Congress acted, the bureaucracy has not. Who will be accountable … nobody! The money involved is insignificant in the scheme of Medicare spending, only $67 million over five years, but that is not the point. This is not an isolated instance of government mismanagement, other examples abound with no accountability.

What is even more curious is why corrective action for a clear violation of a law in effect for seventeen years takes a new budget, new regulations and a proposal from the President to accomplish?

Private companies that operate like this, usually get a new name … bankrupt.