For years, we’ve heard from political ideologues and ambitious district attorneys about how much waste, fraud and abuse there is in state programs like Medi-Cal. Whenever there is a case in which a low-income recipient is charged or convicted, the right-wing cheering section is quick to applaud and point to the case as proof of rampant fraud. <\/p>\n
But where was the applause when Attorney General Kamala Harris recently announced a $241 million settlement in a case of Medi-Cal fraud by Quest Diagnostics, the state’s largest provider of medical laboratory testing? <\/p>\n
The settlement resulted from allegations that Quest systematically overcharged the state’s Medi-Cal program for more than 15 years and gave illegal kickbacks in the form of discounted or free testing to doctors, hospitals and clinics that referred Medi-Cal patients and other business to the labs. Here’s what AG Harris said:<\/p>\n
“In a time of shrinking budgets, this historic settlement affirms that Medi-Cal exists to help the state’s neediest families rather than to illicitly line private pockets. Medi-Cal providers and others who try to cheat the state through false claims and illegal kickbacks should know that my office is watching and will prosecute.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Where is the outrage from these right-wing politicians and ambitious district attorneys at this massive theft of taxpayer dollars? Why can’t these hypocrites muster the same fervor for going after big white-collar firms that score lucrative government contracts, whose taxpayer rip-offs dwarf the meager amounts possibly scammed by a few low-income elderly and disabled Californians?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
For years, we’ve heard from political ideologues and ambitious district attorneys about how much waste, fraud and abuse there is in state programs like Medi-Cal. Whenever there is a case in which a low-income recipient is charged or convicted, the right-wing cheering section is quick to applaud and point to the case as proof of rampant fraud. <\/p>\n
But where was the applause when Attorney General Kamala Harris recently announced a $241 million settlement in a case of Medi-Cal fraud by Quest Diagnostics, the state’s largest provider of medical laboratory testing? <\/p>\n
The settlement resulted from allegations that Quest systematically overcharged the state’s Medi-Cal program for more than 15 years and gave illegal kickbacks in the form of discounted or free testing to doctors, hospitals and clinics that referred Medi-Cal patients and other business to the labs. Here’s what AG Harris said:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2376,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[],"tags":[2065,7307,2691],"class_list":["post-13528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-2065","tag-7307","tag-2691"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Pvhz-3wc","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2376"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13528\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calitics.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}