WASHINGTON – A state hotline has helped thousands of victims in the two months since state officials uncovered a string of fraudulent Medicaid-funded addiction care facilities in Arizona, but the exact scale of the problem is still unknown.
Navajo officials estimate that as many as 8,000 tribal members may have been affected by the scam, and the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System said it has provided aid to more than 3,000 – including 22 fraud victims that it has returned to other states.
Confirmation of those out-of-state cases followed a July letter from Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., citing reports of tribal members in Montana who were lured to Arizona with the promise of treatment.
Tester criticized AHCCCS for letting the scams “plague Arizona’s Tribal Communities for so long that it spread to other States,” and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for failing “to identify this fraudulent waste of taxpayer dollars in the agency’s oversight capacity.”