Posted on 01/13/2006 8:38:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
Tolerance of waste and fraud is a sorry practice for a state that often runs multibillion-dollar budget deficits. An estimate this week by the California Department of Finance says the governor's proposed budget would inflate annual deficits in the future -- with a shortfall hitting $8.6 billion in 2009-10.
Meantime, the California Taxpayers' Association has analyzed press reports and government audits from 2005 and identified $5 billion in misused public money. It is true that the group has a low-tax agenda and therefore an interest in cutting government costs. And the Cal-Tax report (available at www.caltax.org) does include some debatable examples.
That said, the group identifies plenty of ridiculous waste:
Cost overruns on the construction of the eastern span of the San Francisco Bay Bridge hit $81 million last year. The culprit is dithering by Gov. Schwarzenegger and the Legislature over a final design. This is on top of a December 2004 report by the Bureau of State Audits that blamed Caltrans mismanagement for much of the $3.2 billion in overruns since the project began in April 2001.
The Benicia Bridge project, also in the Bay Area, is hemorrhaging money at a rate of $10 million a month. "The good news is we're running out of things to go wrong," said Steve Heminger, head of the Bay Area Toll Authority. That's hardly a comfort. The total cost of the project is now $1.263 billion, four times the 1995 estimate, and there are at least two years to go until the work is finished.
Shady doctors and clinics are bilking the Medi-Cal system out of millions of dollars a year by using illegally obtained patient identity numbers to bill the government for treatment never provided. And that's just one avenue of abuse. State officials have estimated that 3 percent to 10 percent of Medi-Cal's annual $34 billion budget is squandered on fraud and waste.
The state's prison system spent $1.27 million over six months in 2004 to guard a comatose prisoner. Among the expenses was a daily payment of $1,056 in "guard services" mandated by union rules. Only after the story broke early last year did the state parole the convict, who died in March.
There is more -- much more. As Schwarzenegger and the Legislature consider the best ways to spend our limited tax dollars, may we suggest spending a little on rooting out and preventing this kind of wide-scale waste. A decent anti-waste initiative would pay for itself.
"Vote 4 McClintock!"
or pay the consequence$...
There's little in the way of prevention for fraud.
I realize that's a grim statement about the preponderance of lack of ethics (in CA, in any other area, worldwide), but in CA, there's such a huge state and huge population that fraud in healthcare, especially, seems to occur because there's no one around to identify and prevent it.
I can't speak as to fraud in healthcare as to physicians and I've never been affiliated in any way with MediCal, but I DO know from firsthand experience that dentistry in CA is rife with ripoffs and some very bad practitioners.
The HMOs there also DO 'ripoff' patients in the sense that no one person has any recourse to being given ten, fifteen minutes of a doctor's time per YEAR when they're in an HMO, despite healthcare problems that substantiate medically necessary care/treatment beyond that meager blip of attention.
There's no one, no agency, no person, nothing, no where that anyone can effectively complain and individual patients certainly can't to the providers nor the HMO (and I suspect, other provider plan structures, also).
We're so accustomed as public to hearing about the poor, overworked, overtaxed and underreimbursed doctors and dentists but in reality, it's quite the polar opposite. I often think that if they're so unhappy and disappointed in their work, why are they doing it?
No, I think most of the "ripoffs" and "fraud" in, especially, California occurs because it's become near anarchy there, with no one to mind the store, so to speak, no process that prevents any obstacle to a form of organized crime from among, particularly, healthcare and healthcare related organizations. They can and do charge whatever they want for whatever they want and underserve as much as they want to maximize payments received and there's just no process that discourages the bad behavior.
California is a huge state and hugely populated and probably it would be a big improvement if the place was separated into two states, given the difficulties with the now.
But, a lot of these problems are definitely not new ones. I can't see how Schwarzenegger can be held accountable for anything beyond his term of office, to date.
For example, CalTrans problems and the construction issues dealing with transportation in CA have been notoriously financially wasteful and for a long, long time, in CA.
I'd be truly surprised if it were really that low.
Agreed, the Gub is just the latest in a long line of state officials that have just been passing thru this state since it's inception.
The current Gub has definitely left his own unique imprint on the California scene.
Waste, FRaud, GReed, Corruption have always been here to some degree, some administrations were more prone to either allow themselves to indulge and became ensnared or willingly dove right into the realm of UG(underground gubamint).
Many of those officials have added to that image, few have actually been able to battle it effectively or for long or even seek to.
Your comment about the size of California:
.. attempts to split the state up before have failed... ya never know, a South Aztlan and Norte California could be in the future at the rate we're going and growing.
I agree the HMO / Healthcare issue is a whole other can of worms.
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