Posted on 01/08/2010 5:11:59 AM PST by Zakeet
For three years now, a woman has left her home in Poughkeepsie, New York, five days a week and taken a taxi to visit her child at St. Margaret’s Center, a nursing home for disabled children in Albany, New York. Each night, she rides home by taxi.
That costs $300 a day.
What dedication — by taxpayers.
That is right. Taxpayers have shelled out $196,000 over the past three years so that she can make this Poughkeepsie-Albany commute each day. Incredibly, state health officials defended this daily abuse of taxpayers. Could not the woman move to Albany?
It would have been cheaper to buy her a Cadillac Escapade and have her drive herself.
But under Medicaid’s incomprehensibly illogical rules, taxpayers had to give this woman a whopping $65,000 subsidy.
We underpay doctors by 20% or more. But one — likely two — cab drivers have a gravy train going there.
For New York state, the bill comes to $98,000 — with federal taxpayers shelling out another $98,000.
Oh and this happens all over the place. Ambulances in Southern West Virginia became taxis as they shuttled people off to the drug store and the like — and then billed Medicaid.
(Excerpt) Read more at blogs.dailymail.com ...
;O)
That sounds like a bad plan. "Yes I know little Timmy here is autistic, and I swear we haven't already been in to get him vaccinated 23 times this year, but I really really need some Pringles"
Wonder if she called her taxi with an obama phone? They’re free now too to certain people.
FYI - as a former Ambullette and Ambulance driver, an abmbulette is used to transport patients to and from clinics, especially patients in wheelchairs.
They aren’t dressed up to look like ambulances, they are ambulettes and are licensed and say “Ambulette” on them.
The other day I had to sit around in a hospital for a while waiting for someone. This gang-banger was there with his baby-mama and baby. He sure looked physically fit.
Some time later I saw him in a wheel chair saying he was all alone and couldn’t go home until they provided him transportation.
Everybody else gets a friend to go and sit around for hours to provide transportation. Not this guy. He apparently wanted he cab ride although he looked fit enough to run ten miles if the police were after him.
Part of me would like to stand 20 feet away from a guy like that and call him vile names. 10-to-1 he’d jump out of the wheelchair and try to stomp me.
The city I live in has one hospital. Going to the ER is every bit as much a third-world experience as shopping at WalMart. My 91-yr old mother-in-law can’t find a handicapped parking place (she’s a heart patient) because every morbidly obese person in our city has a handicapped tag. If they’d walk a block every now and then it might help. My brother-in-law and his wife are morbidly obese too, but at least they have enough spine to not call themselves ‘handicapped.’
This is why we have open carry laws.
I drove an ambulance almost 40 years ago. Same thing then, except in those days the taxi wouldn’t be paid for by welfare but the ambulance was. Consequently, we had nearly a hundred regulars who called an ambulance for transport to a medical facility. Most of them didn’t even need a stretcher, we were nothing more than a cab would have been.
I’m sure all you say is true and I’m sure you did your job the very best way you know how. I’m just pointing out that in the north bronx this was how the medicaid payment option was abused. Most of those folks could have gotten to the clinic by means of a $15 cab ride but instead took a govt. paid $200 ambulette ride. And of course the 100’s of ambulettes circling the hospital waiting on fares, was a predictable consequence of the bad policy.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.