One thing not mentioned at Andrew Cuomo’s swearing-in ceremony yesterday was the issue of Medicaid fraud, which I seem to remember being a pretty big deal around the beginning of the attorney general race.
Cuomo’s spokeswoman, Wendy Katz, said confirmed that Cuomo is planning to do something fairly dramatic about it by creating a position of deputy attorney general for Medicaid fraud. Although the attorney general’s office already has a solicitor general Medicaid Fraud Control Unit to tackle that issue, she said, the new position will reflect “an increase in prominence.”
She didn’t say who might fill the position or when it might come into being.
Cuomo perviously addressed the issue when he penned an op-ed article explaining that New York is losing 20 percent of money it recovers from Medicaid fraud because it doesn’t have its own False Claims Act to protect whistle blowers.
— Azi Paybarah
