uninsured coverage Mass Free Medical Care

Gov. Deval Patrick yesterday shrugged off a scathing inspector general’s report that found costly loopholes in the state’s $414 million free health-care pool — as Republicans pushed to put the brakes on the program.

“The depth of the issues is not as great as first read,” Patrick said of the report during the “Ask the Governor” segment on “Jim and Margery” on WTKK-FM (96.9).

The Herald this week reported that according to the IG probe, the state’s free medical care program — designed to help low-income uninsured Massachusetts residents — spent $7 million on hospital and doctors’ bills for out-of-staters and foreigners, and $6 million on duplicate claims.



“I venture to say that some of these issues might be a little exaggerated. That doesn’t mean to say an isolated incident isn’t significant,” Patrick said.

The IG’s office responded in a statement saying that because the administration had “failed to implement a claims adjudication system for outpatient claims . . . the Office commissioned its own claims editing adjudication.”

The office hired “an experienced health-care provider claims adjudication company,” Senior Assistant Inspector General Jack McCarthy said. “This vendor followed all Massachusetts laws and regulations.”

The report was hand-delivered to Health and Human Services Secretary JudyAnn Bigby on March 3, McCarthy said.

Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr (R-Gloucester) and state Sens. Robert Hedlund (R-Weymouth), Michael Knapik (R-Westfield) and Richard Ross (R-Wrentham) called for better verification of applicants’ Medicaid eligibility, improved safeguards to prevent duplicate payments or payments for medically unnecessary procedures, and an audit of the state’s Medicaid program by the inspector general.

“We find it extremely troubling to learn there are such lax procedures in place that have allowed so many people to take advantage of the system,” Tarr said. “When health-care costs continue to grow at an unsustainable rate, we simply cannot allow such waste and abuse to continue.”

Tarr yesterday filed three amendments to the state’s 2011 supplemental budget to crack down on flaws in the system. The amendments failed last night.

“It’s deeply troubling that, in face of overwhelming evidence that health-care dollars are being spent appropriately, we failed to take action,” said Tarr, who scoffed at the majority party’s suggestion that safeguards are already in place. “If that’s the case, why was this report released?”

Hillary Chabot and Laura Crimaldi contributed to this report.