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School districts miss out on Medicaid cash
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
CAPITAL REGION — Three Capital Region school districts were among eight districts which failed to claim at least $3.1 million in reimbursements from Medicaid to which they were entitled, an audit by the state comptroller’s office found. Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli’s office said the Greater Amsterdam School District, Johnstown City School District and Shenendehowa Central School District were among the districts which did not file for the reimbursements. By not claiming the Medicaid reimbursable expenses, DiNapoli said the state and the area school districts lost $1.54 million in revenue to evenly share. “Medicaid reimbursements are an important revenue source for school districts and the state,” DiNapoli said in a statement. “The money is being spent, the services are being provided and districts should go after the reimbursement.” According to Thomas Perillo, superintendent of the Greater Amsterdam School District, the district does receive some money from Medicaid reimbursements and has a dedicated clerical person to handle the necessary paperwork associated with that task, but isn’t getting all the money available because certain staff do not have a state license. Perillo said certain staff, such as speech and language teachers, would need to be licensed by the state for the district to receive more Medicaid funding and that would require the teacher to go back to school, something the district doesn’t require or pay for. According to DiNapoli’s office, school districts cited several reasons for failing to claim the Medicaid reimbursements including not quickly identifying Medicaid eligible students, difficulty obtaining proper documentation from service providers, irregularly claiming bills resulting in a backlog of claims and not reviewing Medicaid claim denials for the potential of resubmitting claims for reimbursement. Other school districts cited by the comptroller’s office as failing to submit reimbursement claims were Lansingburgh Central, Peru Central, Plattsburgh city, Salmon River city and Saranac Central. DiNapoli’s office plans to audit all of the state’s 834 school districts, BOCES units and charter schools by 2010 as a way to improve the accountability of the state’s schools.
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December 2, 2008
4:39 a.m. [ Suggest removal ]
DiNapoli is planning on running for President now. We can be sure that the "community organizer" route is acceptable for Democratic candidates since Nobama has done so well.
Seriously, this is exactly like the bogus school lunch program except that the local taxpayers are absorbing 25 % of the costs. By getting the districts to file for this "free" state money, there is an automatic increase in demand. Once the word is out in the entitlement's community more and more will pile on. My favorite Gloversville story is the upper middle class couple who quite legally used the school's Committee on Specialized Education to fund their child's hearing aids instead of using their own Medical Insurance. The net result was that instead of them being out a $200 copay, the district was out $2000. Assuming this to be 100% medicaidable, the state contributed $500 and the local property owners $500 based upon the current Federal 50%, NYS 25%, County 25%. Obviously the burden of school districts on local taxpayers is becoming onerous and since the teacher's unions are big contributors to Mr.DiNapoli's party, so this plea to get on the gravy train just shifts the burdens from higher school taxes to higher county taxes with zero relief at the property owner level.