Taxpayers spent at least $4.3 billion over a three-year period covering the same Medicaid patients twice, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Medicaid paid health insurance companies for hundreds of thousands of patients who signed up for the program in two or more separate states. This happened when a patient moved to a different state but Medicaid continued paying the insurance company in the state where the resident previously lived.
Medicaid is a joint state and federal health insurance program for the poor. Medicaid pays private insurance companies for each person covered. However, a person isn’t supposed to be covered in a state after moving out.
The Journal reported that from 2019 to 2021—which included the COVID-19 pandemic—duplicative payments for an average of about 660,000 patients per year totaled $4.3 billion, and more than 270 Medicaid…
