NAMA Restores Medicaid Transportation Checks to NYC Patients

Announcement

May 20, 2006

Re: Medicaid, New York

Last December NYC had a Transit Strike and Medicaid patients received their transportation checks as usual. Or at least until Medicaid realized that patients were being paid for subway transportation that did not exist for 3 or 4 days. Medicaid viewed the error as fraud. It did not matter that many patients had to take cabs which cost them more than a subway fare. The only consideration was that patients were being paid for something that was not there.

In their great wisdon Medicaid stopped all transportation checks. Patients began to complain that they had not received their checks. Four dollars a day is a lot for someone with a fixed income. But Medicaid was not understanding and continued to stretch the whole affair out.

Then the expected thing happened: a patient was arrested for jumping the turnstile. That was it! Walter Ginter at this point called the Medicaid offices and read them the NAMA Riot Act. And within hours programs were being notified that the checks were being released. So much for procrastination.

By the end of May all Medicaid Transportation should be up to date.