Missouri residents who fraudulently bill Medicaid owe the state $170 million, Gov. Mike Parson said Friday afternoon during a news conference at the Missouri State Capitol.
Parson held the news conference after a meeting with cabinet officials and state health leaders as he announced the creation of a new Medicaid and Fraud Abuse Task Force. The task force will be charged with identifying where Medicaid fraud happens and how to uncover inefficiencies in the system.
Each year, Missouri spends $10 billion on its Medicaid program, which covers about 1 million people.
"At the end of the day, what we really want is to help the people that need the help," Parson said. "The people that really need it are the ones that we want to get those services to."
Former Missouri House Speaker Todd Richardson recently accepted a new position as director of the Mo HealthNet Division of the Missouri Department of Social Services. Now, Richardson oversees the state's Medicaid program. He said there is clear evidence of fraudulent billing and other times where the state dodges paying for fraudulent bills.
"It is the primary health care source for nearly a million Missourians, and we need to make sure that program is sustainable," Richardson said. "And it's providing the resources for Missouri's most vulnerable that need the program."
Parson, Richardson and other state health leaders toured the state this week to find ways to improve Missouri's health care system. The Affordable Care Act made federal funds available to states that wanted to expand Medicaid, but Richardson and other Republicans in the Missouri General Assembly repeatedly blocked attempts to expand the program.
Currently, to qualify for Medicaid coverage in Missouri, residents must have household incomes of 22 percent of the federal poverty level or be a pregnant woman, disabled senior or parent to a child already in the program. Expansion proponents generally favor plans to expand Medicaid to individuals who have income at or below about 133 percent of the federal poverty level.
Richardson shot down a question about whether his office would seek to expand Medicaid eligibility and said his office is focused on making sure the program is financially sustainable well into the future.
"We are not going to be focused on expanding eligibility," Richardson said. "That conversation (about financial sustainability) has to take place before we should even contemplate the idea of putting more people on Medicaid."
Parson hinted at the end of the press conference he wants the task force to find inefficiencies because many are unknown.
"That's exactly what this task force is supposed to be about," Parson said. "Trying to find solutions, trying to find where the problems are and how to resolve them."