The latest reported gem from the bureaucratic buffet is that the Office of Inspector General (OIG) found that states are still making “capitation” payments on behalf of dead people who once signed up for Medicaid and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). A capitation payment is an upfront, fixed amount paid to a healthcare provider to cover all or most of a patient’s care for a set period.
According to Just the News [1], it turns out some of the same states that previously got flagged for sending taxpayer dollars to deceased Medicaid enrollees – yes, real humans whose pulse long ago left the building – haven’t quite managed to revamp their systems.
The OIG report covers payments from 2009-19, putting the figure at roughly $248.6 million in improper capitation payments, with $171.8 million being the federal share.
And if that doesn’t make you rub your eyes: On the SNAP side of things, federal officials found 5,000 dead-people recipients and half-a-million people getting double benefits under duplicate names. One official even labeled SNAP “perhaps one of the most corrupt, dysfunctional programs in American history.”
So here we are: alive taxpayers funding benefits for the dearly departed. The fix? The OIG recommends better death-data matching, quicker updates of enrollment systems, and doing more than just nodding when states say “We’ll do better.”