Scott noted yesterday the lonely battle waged by the Acting U.S. Attorney for Minnesota, Joe Thompson, against the more than $1 billion in fraud committed against federal taxpayers via Minnesota state government.
It’s a cautionary tale for the rest of (blue) America. U.S. Attorney Thompson was interviewed earlier this week by the local ABC affiliate (KSTP-5) about the latest target of his office, a state-run program called Housing Stabilization Services (HSS).
Medicaid reimbursements for the federal Housing Stabilization Services program exceed $100 million.
Thompson told KSTP the “vast majority” of that program is fraudulent.
Vast majority. The local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, blames the HSS debacle on “bad design.” Truth be told, this “groundbreaking” program was never designed to do anything useful.
Minnesota was the first state in the nation to offer this program through Medicaid. Rather than provide actual housing units to the homeless, the program paid unvetted vendors to offer “services,” to Medicaid recipients which mostly consisted of counseling with bromides like pay your rent on time and you won’t be evicted.
Barriers to entry for new vendors were nonexistent, and state agencies just paid invoices, no questions asked.
Rather than end the program outright, and write off the disaster as lessons learned, Tim Walz’s state Dept. of Human Services is making some “changes,” instituting some “reforms” to begin on August 1.
Remember this episode the next time some politician says that we need to “do something” to “help” the homeless.
