Kentucky Medicaid errors lead to nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money wasted

FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) — The Kentucky auditor’s office announced that nearly $1 billion in taxpayer money was wasted on Wednesday after examining the Kentucky Department of Medical Services.

Auditor Allison Ball announced that a specific failure by the DMS was the cause of the roughly $800 million wasted.

“This exam uncovered about $800 million of taxpayer dollars erroneously paid without benefiting Medicaid recipients,” Ball said. “Medicaid is one of Kentucky’s costliest programs, and it’s essential that we make sure every Medicaid dollar spent is going directly to benefit Kentuckians in need of services, not being wasted due to bureaucratic negligence.” 

According to the examination, DMS failed to take basic steps to ensure it wasn’t making duplicate payments made by other states after a recipient moved out of Kentucky to another state.

All states are required to check for and investigate federal government alerts warning that duplicate payments have happened, but the examination claimed that DMS failed to do so.

Ball’s office confirmed that this was the latest in “a series of Kentucky Medicaid issues” it has uncovered.

Other issues include:

• Failing to ensure ineligible noncitizens do not receive Medicaid benefits
• Failing to prevent the same social security number from being used by multiple people seeking Medicaid
• Failing to complete inspections of more than 100 long-term care facilities in Kentucky, some of which were last visited in 2019.

Ball’s full special report can be seen here. A statewide audit, with a list of previous Medicaid findings in Kentucky, can be found here.