Taxpayers Get Bitten by Medicaid Fraud

From the uncomfortable tools in your mouth, the bright light shining in your eyes and then finally the large bill at the end with little to show for it except for a painful jaw, nobody likes going to the dentist.    Now taxpayers have even less to be happy about when it comes to dentists because of a newly uncovered fraud where Dentists are doing unnecessary, painful procedures on poor children in order to rack up more money from Medicaid.

As the Today Show reported, a company called Small Smiles, raked in $1,000,000 in revenue from one location (with 90 percent of that revenue coming from taxpayers through Medicaid).  Unfortunately this is not the first time that these types of clinics have been exposed for waste, fraud, and abuse.  As “Today” reported, a few years ago, Small Smiles settled with the Department of Justice for providing substandard and unnecessary procedures, yet the problems still exist and the operation raked in $150 million last year in Medicaid money.

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated instance of fraud, and it seems to be particularly acute in Texas.  As the Wall Street Journal reported in August, “A 2012 report by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform offered case studies in various states of supposed Medicaid abuse; it cited dental services in Texas as a particular problem area. By 2010, according to the report, Texas’ Medicaid program was spending more on braces than the other 49 state Medicaid programs spent combined on such orthotics. Last year, the Texas Medicaid program paid out $1.4 billion to dentists and orthodontists—a roughly fourfold increase since 2006, according to state records. The federal government reimburses Texas for 60% of its spending on dental and orthodontic procedures. About 3.3 million of 26.4 million Texans are currently enrolled in Medicaid, according to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission.”

Because this type of problem seems to be recurring, stricter penalties need to be in place to deter future violations.  Otherwise you can bet that these egregious instances will continue to occur, and the taxpayers will continue to be kicked in the teeth.