Giving Compass' Take:

· According to Governing, a number of Medicaid insurers have neglected to inform states about changes to their systems and have refrained from screening for fraud. This ordeal has allowed millions of tax payer dollars to fund unworthy causes.

· What can Medicaid insurers do to enforce stricter screening for fraud? 

· New proposals for Medicaid expansion and reform have been discussed all over the country. Read about a doctor's perspective on the proposed Medicaid work requirement.

Despite receiving billions of dollars in taxpayer money, Medicaid insurers are lax in ferreting out fraud and neglect to tell states about unscrupulous medical providers, according to a federal report released Thursday.

The U.S. Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office said a third of the health plans it examined had referred fewer than 10 cases each of suspected fraud or abuse to state Medicaid officials in 2015 for further investigation. Two insurers in the program, which serves low-income Americans, didn’t identify a single case all year, the report found.

Some health plans terminated providers from their networks for fraud but didn’t inform the state. The inspectors said that could allow those doctors or providers to defraud other Medicaid insurers or other government programs in the same state.

In addition, some insurance companies failed to recover millions of dollars in overpayments made to doctors, home health agencies or other providers. The inspector general said insurers stood to benefit financially from this because higher costs can justify increased Medicaid rates in the future. (The report didn’t name specific insurers or states.)

Read the full article about Medicaid fraud by Chad Terhune at Governing Magazine.