The two Democratic contenders in New York’s gubernatorial race are squaring off on Medicaid fraud, with candidate Thomas R. Suozzi criticizing his opponent, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, for the amount of Medicaid funds recovered, reports The New York Times. With an average of $35.5 million recovered from Medicaid fraud each year through 2003, the percentage of recovery for New York, which has the largest Medicaid budget in the country, is slightly above the national average. But given the large size of the state’s Medicaid antifraud unit, Spitzer should be recovering many more dollars, says Suozzi, who claims that New York is losing 10% of its Medicaid budget to fraud. Spitzer counters that fraud accounts for only 2% of Medicaid losses--$900 million a year--and points to the $219.1 million the antifraud unit recovered in 2005, the largest recovery in the country. Before Spitzer came into office in 1999, his predecessor recovered an average of $10.6 million each in year in Medicaid fraud.
