New York’s Adult Day Care Racket

One major Trump Administration achievement has been exposing fraud in entitlement programs that has been hiding in plain sight. The latest targets are New York’s sham adult day care centers, which state officials are finally investigating after a push from Washington.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services on Wednesday said FBI agents and New York officials raided dozens of “social” adult day care facilities. CMS also sent notices to centers warning they could be ousted from the program because it had uncovered evidence of fraud, which agency administrator Mehmet Oz rightly called a “plague to the state.”

What is social adult day care, you might ask? These centers are supposed to provide meals, personal care and social activities to “functionally impaired” adults. Anyone who claims to need assistance with everyday activities or “supervision due to cognitive and/or psycho-social impairment” can qualify. Such broad eligibility is ripe for abuse.

CMS officials said centers paid seniors kickbacks up to $1,000 a month to enroll in their programs and then billed Medicaid for services not provided. In some cases, sign-in sheets at centers documenting a senior’s attendance were filled out in advance. The schemes resemble the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota for autism therapy and housing services.

Staten Island District Attorney Michael McMahon this week charged two adult day care “providers” with billing for services for people who were dead or out of the country. The examples appear even to have embarrassed Democrats in Albany.

“New York has zero tolerance for anyone who steals from taxpayers because every dollar lost to fraud is a dollar that should be used to help New Yorkers get care and services they desperately need,” Gov. Kathy Hochul said. That’s...

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