Zombie Medicaid

Medicaid in the District of Columbia continues to pay even after you die. Really. According to The Examiner, Medicaid paid over $700,000 in claims on dead people.

One patient had been dead for 9 years.

The gaffes are part of nearly $4 million in erroneous payments made by the city's Department of Health Care Finance in 2009, most of which are payments for claims with an invalid or no Social Security number at all. In addition, the Office of the Inspector General audit said the department might have overpaid its billings by $22.6 million, a possibility that health officials are now looking into.

Of the $662,934 paid for services rendered after the patient died, three claims were for an average of about $96,000 and one of those was paid eight years and 10 months years after the resident's death, the audit found.

$4 million sounds like a lot of money. There is a reason for that.

It IS a lot of money.

But it could have been worse -- the audit pointed to a check for $5.6 million that nearly made it out the door. The bill? $100.

Speechless . . .