12/27/25: A6 “Medicaid paid over $200M for dead people”.
Per statista.com: Medicaid paid $748 billion in 2021 and paid $824 billion in 2022, total $1.572 trillion. The article stated overpayments to dead people of $207.5 million during 2021-2022. That is an overpayment for those years of 0.0132%. If $207.5 million was for one fiscal year, then that is an approximate overpayment of 0.026%. Less than 3 errors in 10,000 transactions. Sounds like a very low clerical error rate, not a fraudulent scheme. However, upcoding is inherently fraudulent. I presume there are other instances of fraud but 0.026% is not it.
James Abels
Midtown
Disclaimer: As submitted to the Arizona Daily Star.
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