Hawaii Governor unaware or unconcerned of federal investigations of DHS

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Governor Abercrombie's health policy analyst Michael Ng admitted yesterday the governor is unaware of any of the ongoing federal investigations targeting DHS and its administration of Medicaid and Medicare.

One of two things has happened: either the state's Medicaid bureaucrats have hidden the information from the governor; or the governor has adopted an ostrich position of what he doesn't know about he doesn't have to do anything about.

Specific federal investigations Ng denied knowledge of included the following:

* six investigations by the Office for Civil Rights, including two opened in May;

* CMS investigation of potential Medicare fraud at DHS;

* on-going personal visits and phone calls from federal regulatory officials;

* on-going federal regulatory violations by the health plans about which DHS is doing nothing.

Documentation was provided to Ng. It will be interesting to see if that gets to the Governor's desk.

The information came out at a meeting yesterday between Ng and a group composed of lawyers, social workers, nurses, and the children with disabilities and their families who will be hardest hit if the governor does not veto SB 1274. Parents were literally pleading for their children's lives if access to the state's independent insurance division appeals process is denied them.

Abercrombie's campaign website is still up, and his campaign promises for healthcare, civil rights and human services are there. The difference between what he said and the message of his failure to veto SB 1274 is striking.

Monday is the deadline and the state still has not asked the feds if they really need to repeal H.R.S. 432E-6 in order to meet federal Affordable Care Act requirements.

UnitedHealth under federal scrutiny in Hawaii over possible Medicare scam

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I reported on January 23 that a Kauai family claimed to have been duped by an employee of UnitedHealth into changing to the company's Medicare plan.

By February 8, federal Medicaid regulators from CMS were involved in the investigation.

This is only the latest in a long line of federal formal and informal audits, oversight and investigations plaguing Hawaii's Medicaid program since the fall of 2009.  In addition to CMS, the DHHS Office for Civil Rights, the FBI/DOJ and even the federal Office for Civil Rights of the Department of Education have all been involved.

I could understand why Lingle and Koller kept all this from the public.  They had built here in Hawaii a perfect Republican dream of how Medicaid should function under privatization, and small problems like deaths, let alone violations of federal laws, were just pesky details.

But where does our new Democratic governor stand with all this?  He seemed to promise an end to privatized Medicaid, but now is letting privatized Medicaid draft state legislation.

Meanwhile, life and death decisions continue to be made daily by people motivated more by profit than medical need.  

Governor Abercrombie, respectfully, you need to step in and put a stop to this before anyone else can be hurt.  Only you and the Feds can do that right now.  And you need to come clean with your voters about the state's dirty laundry and what you're going to do to wash it.