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[b]Control health benefits for state retirees

   With another timely veto, Gov. Eliot Spitzer has just saved New Yorkers from another costly giveaway to the unions, this one sponsored by our own Sen. Hugh Farley. The bill would have guaranteed lifetime health benefits for government retirees, which are now way too generous and expensive.
   A new accounting standard, required of states starting this year, makes clear for the fi rst time the extent of the state’s liability: $1 billion a year for current retirees and a staggering total of $47 billion for future ones. This is neither affordable nor fair to taxpayers, most of whom do not have employer-paid health insurance in retirement and many of whom do not have even while working. Changes must be made — and, fortunately, they can be because these benefits aren’t guaranteed by the state constitution (as pensions are) or by contract. Or, thanks to Spitzer (and George Pataki, who vetoed similar legislation at least three times), by law.
   The generosity starts with making employees eligible for full health benefits upon retirement after just 10 years of service. It extends to making them available immediately upon retirement, which many workers can do with a full pension at age 55. In such a case, taxpayers foot most of the $10,000-plus bill (retirees contribute 10 percent for an individual plan and 25 percent for a family plan, and even that can be reduced or eliminated by banking sick leave) for 10 years until the retiree becomes eligible for Medicare. Then, the state picks up all of the premiums for Medicare coverage for physician services — known as Part B — and most of the premium for supplementary insurance for costs that Medicare doesn’t cover.
   In the past, these costs were hidden because the state treated them as an annual expenditure and rolled them into the cost of health insurance for current state workers. But with the new accounting standards, they had to be broken out and the future liability calculated. So we now know that to fully fund these benefits for current and future retirees, the state would have to sock away another $2.8 billion a year. That’s money that would not be available for other things, such as roads, bridges, day care, and economic development.
   State workers, who are well paid (better than most private employees, at least upstate) and have generous pensions, can afford to absorb more of the cost for their health coverage in retirement. Current retirees should not have their benefits cut — for practical and moral reasons — but the state should start restructuring health benefits for future retirees. Changes could include reducing and delaying benefits for those with short terms of service; reducing or eliminating coverage for early retirees; getting rid of the Medicare Part B subsidy; and, for younger workers, switching to a private health savings trust fund that both the state and worker would contribute to.
   All these, as well as the possibility of universal health care, can be considered by an expert task force that Farley says he will introduce another bill to create. Now that’s a good idea.[/b

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State workers, who are well paid (better than most private employees, at least upstate) and have generous pensions

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Audit finds $10M in state Medicaid overpayments
BY RICHARD RICHTMYER The Associated Press

   New York state paid nearly $10 million in Medicaid claims over fi ve years for home care and transportation services for patients who were either in the hospital or had died, according to an audit.
   Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli blamed the state Department of Health for not detecting the overpayments, a problem also identifi ed in past audits.
   The comptroller’s office reviewed records for a five-year period that ended in April 2006 and found the state paid $5.7 million for home care while Medicaid recipients were in the hospital or had died.
   Most of those overpayments were for hospitalized patients. Roughly $14,000 was paid for the care of patients who had died.
   A separate audit of medical transportation providers during the same period found about $4 million in payments for trips that probably never happened because the patients were already in the hospital.
   The state paid just under $1 billion in Medicaid claims for home care and about $338 million for transportation in 2004, the most recent information available, according to the health department.
   DiNapoli said the audit findings underscore a problem with the state’s Medicaid claims processing system, which is administered by the health department.
   Claire Pospisil, a health department spokeswoman, pointed out that the comptroller’s audit covered Medicaid billing during former Gov. George Pataki’s administration.
   Since Gov. Eliot Spitzer took office in January, the agency has beeen upgrading the system to “stop and detect fraudulent billing and close the cracks,” Pospisil said, although she could not provide details.

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“stop and detect fraudulent billing and close the cracks,” Pospisil said, although she could not provide details.