AUGUSTA, Maine — Like many other states, Maine is not taking full advantage of the Public Assistance Reporting Information System operated by the federal government to help states find cases of fraud in a wide array of programs. The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee is concerned the lack of reporting leads to more loss of federal funds to fraud.
“I support efforts to ensure that people who need assistance get it and those who would cheat the system do not,” said Sen. Susan Collins, the ranking GOP member of the panel. “The federal government should beef up its system for collecting and making more accessible information about who is, and who is not, eligible for payments.”
The panel has had one hearing on the issue and more are expected, with one estimate that the federal government made $125 billion in erroneous payments last year.
The voluntary program generates reams of possible cases of fraud and Maine, like many states, does not have the staff to sift through the data and determine the validity of the information, although the state is adding more investigators under a measure approved by lawmakers last month.
“We get reports quarterly and there is an awful lot of information that has to be reviewed,” said Scott Fitts, director of the Fraud, Investigation and Recovery Unit at the Department of Health and Human Services. He said there are several federal lists of individuals who may be receiving food stamps, Medicaid or other safety net programs in more than one state.
Fitts said the system works on the basis of Social Security numbers and other federal data submitted by all of the states to the federal government. It covers Medicaid, food stamps, welfare benefits, child care benefits and workers compensation and a state can access all of that information quarterly.
“We have to scrub all that data,” he said, “and we just can’t get through all of it and there are a lot of mistakes, like wrong Social Security numbers or names and often what looks like something is not when we check it out.”
Fitts said there are only nine investigators for the entire state and they are responsible for all fraud investigations, such as tips to the fraud hotline, not just following up information on the leads provided by the PARIS matches. He said in the most recent quarterly match there were thousands of possible cases from PARIS in the various files.
He said many leads simply are not fraud, such as when a person moves from one state to another and shows up in both because they have applied for benefits in another state while still being listed on Maine’s rolls. He said the numbers in the files are also somewhat inflated because a family of five would show up as five separate entries in the computer data, not as a family.
“We are more reactive than proactive to the PARIS matches,” he said, “though we do use the data regularly.”
Fitts said the Legislature added 8 investigators and 2 support staff positions starting Jan. 1, 2012. The total cost of the initiative is $675,000 a year.
Sen. Earle McCormick, R-West Gardiner, the co-chairman of the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee, sponsored the measure for Gov. Paul LePage. He said there were some concerns raised during committee deliberations about adding staff when some on the panel did not believe there is a serious fraud problem.
“We have not had a lot of resources to do investigations and a lot of people concluded we don’t have a problem,” he said. “This should answer that question by providing resources to do more investigations than we have done in the past.”
McCormick said the intent is to find any abuses there are in the system, not reduce benefits for individuals. He said it may be that more resources may be needed.
“It seems that everyone has a story to tell about what may be abuse of the system,” he said. “This will provide for more investigations and we can get to what is the size of the problem and how we should best address it.”
Sen. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, also serves on the committee and she supported the legislation but unsuccessfully argued some of the investigators should have been dedicated to provider fraud.
“That’s where you could find some big savings,” she said.
Another area where some states are using PARIS and Maine is not is in workers compensation claims. But Workers Compensation Board Executive Director Paul Sighinolfi said he is having his staff review the possibility of using the PARIS system.
And the Republican Witch Hunt Continues!
Yeah, what’s $125 billion. No big deal…
About one thousandth of the GDP, yet the deficit continues to get closer to the actual GDP!
So it surely ain’t welfare abuse destroying this country!
Joe’s Smoke Shop ain’t the enemy!
I would take a good look at the Military spending on Fraudlent wars in the Wrong countries and big Pharmacuetical dealings where the government pays full price decided by the companies rather than negotiated fairly.
Joe’s Smoke Shop ain’t the enemy!
Its the ones telling you that they are running on government needs to get out of their way so that they can continue to rake the general public over the coals!
Thats a hint!
A good one!
We need to take it!
I see, so we should just let it slide…
One thousandths of the GDP,
Think about that the next time that you sit down with a one inch thick Filet Migon ,
Slice off a 1/8 th” slice, thats welfare,
then slice off a razor blade thickness from that,
Thats welfare fraud.
Is it worth splitting the remainder to protect the shavings?
I believe that Senator Craven is correct — provider fraud is happening and in big amounts.
Now we know why LePage and his tea party Republican blame everything on fraud to push their agenda, welfare fraud, unemployment fraud, workers comp fraud. The only fraud I see is Collins representing me as my Senator. What about corporate welfare fraud? We never hear about that although its what brought this economy down to its knees with Wall Street fraud and the banking fraud but did they get punished? Collins your a joke.
They aren’t interested in the big fish. The little fish are easier to catch….you know the ones who can’t afford the expensive attorneys.
I guess that you fail to recognise that the Witch’s are the ones doing the Hunting!
I worked on PARIS and Maine started participating during the Baldacci administration. It was started by the Feds during the Clinton years. So instead of spouting off on things you know nothing about why don’t you get the facts otherwise you end up looking like idiots.
Wasn’t that part of Clinton’s Welfare Reform Act? The one that’s not remembered or used any more? Thanks for the link, by the way. :)
It could be although I am not really sure.
Like I said: Not remembered anymore. :(
How fickle we are.
With all due respect, do you remember the specifics of the Welfare Reform Act without having to google it?
Heck no! But I wasn’t working in that field either.
With all deference, I meant no offense; just asking around… :)
None taken. I was just asking. Still it is a valid question. :)
Susan – the biggest reason that Maine is not part of this Federal Tracking System, is because the Penguin Administration is currently the largest source of Federal Medicaid fraud in the State. They’re pulling down funds from Washington to employ 8 fraud investigators to dive into this reportedly rampant abuse in Maine. After months of digging, these 8 full time State employees, prodded by the Penguin Administration, managed to bust some store owner in Lewiston whose been letting a couple of his long term customers buy smokes with their EBT cards. They tell us that if you count every pack he ever sold to these guys, plus the lost taxes and some random interest rate over 10 years, this small business owners ‘fraud’ comes to almost $5K. Wow!
Thank God for this crack team. Until you think, wait….” What is this team of Federally funded investigators costing us? Here’s the math: 8 Investigators at $40K/year + benefits of 30%. That equals $52K per investigator per year. And there are 8 of them. That means that these investigators are costing us $416K for 12 months. Which means that in order to justify their existence, they need to come up with $34K/mo of fraud discoveries. So far, they’ve come up with $5K. Looks to me like the fraud lies within the Penguin Administration. But we already knew that.
Did you happen to go to the PARIS website and read the success stories?
http://transition.acf.hhs.gov/programs/paris/success-story
The real benefit of the war on Welfare is all Political!
The Taxpayer money goes to fund the witch hunt propaganda that Government is the problem and the Taxpayer is getting screwed so that we elect the OTHER crooked Government!
How Ironic,
Run away spending of Taxpayer Money spent to focus on Fear and Loathing of Taxpayer spending == Free Campaign!!!
A recent post on Public Unions was that it was a Self Licking Ice Cream Cone.
If thats the case then the GOP is a Triple Decker!!!
“The voluntary program generates reams of possible cases of fraud and Maine, like many states, does not have the staff to sift through the data and determine the validity of the information, although the state is adding more investigators under a measure approved by lawmakers last month.”
Too ironic! They claim they want to fight fraud and then they underfund government so the staff is incapable of combating that fraud.
Did this program just begin? Are we only just now hearing about it? What’s the deal? Why didn’t Charlie Webster find this out on his own? I’ll bet the corporations commit more fraud in a day than the rest of us do all year. Let’s get at that! Even if it’s only by percent, that’s a heck of a lot more money.