Governor targets home health fraud

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July 9, 2009

Governor Schwarzenegger has pledged to limit the "waste, fraud, and abuse" in California's In-Home Supportive Services program, which provides care to senior citizens and the disabled. He says that the state could save $400-500 million per year through stricter regulations, including mandatory fingerprinting of home health recipients and providers and IHSS enforcement through unannounced home visits. State Democrats and program advocates argue that the governor is cutting essential services to close the budget gap. Larry Mantle discusses the details of the proposal.

Also on this episode

John Spillane, Chief Deputy District Attorney, Los Angeles County

George Runner, Republican California State Senator from Lancaster, representing the 17th District

Eva Lopez, Deputy Director for Adult Programs, California Department of Social Services

Kristie Renee' Sepulveda-Burchit
4 months, 2 weeks ago

This is actually In Home Supportive Services not Medi Cal to which this article is being referred too. However the proposals that the Governor put for this system was basically to eliminate the program.

Furthermore the proposal by our governor was virtually to eliminate 90% of those
that have IHSS from having it which would leave the program with 10%. Step 2 was
to add beuracrats to monitor for fraud. They just added several and they wanted
to add I think four more persons responsible for monitoring abuse with only 10%
of those who now have IHSS to retain it. Does that not sound ridiculous?

The Budget Committee did gut the program a bit to 10% will be cut out of IHSS.
This means those that have an index rate of less than 2. The Governor wanted all
those who have an index rate of less than 3/4 out of the program which would
have put the 90% out of the program. Now you might think hey my child with a
disability has a whole bunch of fours or three so maybe he would have been okay
right? Well if your child under age 10 or 18 doesn't have certain items filled
out like cooking, cleaning, doing laundry etc because they say that children
their age can't do those things anyway than that still accumulates an index rate
but it's a zero so that drags your index rate down. So for instance a child who
is severe but still a child because they don't have several items filled out may
be a four or three or five on a lot of areas because they are severe but with
the other areas dragging the total down they turn out to be a 2.5. Under the
Goveror's plan for "reform" and "overhaul" that child would no longer be
eligible for IHSS

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