An editorial from Saturday’s Sacramento Bee: High-tech fix won’t stop IHSS fraud

In an effort to cut what Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger claims is rampant fraud in the state’s In-Home Supportive Services Program, the Department of Social Services is pushing a pilot program to assess the efficacy of an expensive high-tech system to fingerprint and photograph care providers and their recipients.

The MorphoTrak device, which the state is testing in three counties, including Sacramento, has been used by the military in Iraq. It can fingerprint, snap a photo and transfer data instantaneously. The machines cost up to $5,000 a copy. If deployed statewide, the state would need 600 to 1,000 of these devices potentially. But let’s hold on a minute.

Before the state commits to buying this expensive equipment and building yet another expensive police bureaucracy that treats all IHSS recipients and their caregivers as potential criminals, it needs to perform a far more thorough assessment of the potential for fraud within IHSS and the best way to address it.  

In the welfare realm, fingerprints and photo IDs are used primarily to prevent duplicate fraud, cases in which aid recipients go to different counties and apply for welfare or food stamps under different names. IHSS services are delivered in recipients’ homes. It’s hard to conceive of an elderly frail or disabled IHSS recipient traveling from Sacramento to Yolo to apply for help bathing or feeding him- or herself at two different addresses.

To the extent that IHSS fraud exists, the vast majority involves caregivers claiming payment for services that were not provided, or elderly and frail IHSS recipients exaggerating the extent of their disabilities.

An expensive bureaucratic apparatus to capture and store fingerprints and photos of recipients and caregivers does nothing to address those problems. A $5,000 camera-fingerprint device would pay for 500 hours of in-home care to poor elderly and disabled people.

Although the administration needs to look out for taxpayers, it shouldn’t waste money on anti-fraud efforts that make little sense.