LaShonia Ingram was considered one of 28 Medicaid beneficiaries in Tennessee charged with TennCare fraud final yr. The District Lawyer dropped the felony prices.

Brad Vest/WPLN

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Brad Vest/WPLN

LaShonia Ingram was considered one of 28 Medicaid beneficiaries in Tennessee charged with TennCare fraud final yr. The District Lawyer dropped the felony prices.

Brad Vest/WPLN

Life was upended for LaShonia Ingram during the last yr, and a shadow nonetheless follows her round.

Search her identify on-line, and the primary consequence consists of the phrases “fraud” and “most needed.”

“It was horrible. I could not get a job,” says the 42-year-old mom from Memphis, Tennessee. “All doorways had been being closed in my face.”

Ingram resorted to promoting purses out of her trunk to assist her household. She says even DoorDash and Uber would not enable her to work with a felony cost.

Her alleged crime? Fraud.

The state of Tennessee accused her of dwelling in close by Horn Lake, Mississippi, whereas nonetheless being enrolled within the state’s Medicaid program, referred to as TennCare. All of it turned out to be a mix-up, however the harm to her popularity and funds was carried out.

Tennessee is likely one of the most aggressive states within the nation on the subject of policing doable Medicaid fraud amongst beneficiaries like Ingram. The state posts the names and pictures of individuals arrested for alleged fraud on a authorities web site and social media. Some even wind up on a so-called “most needed” checklist, as in the event that they had been harmful and on the run.

The checklist is maintained by Tennessee’s Workplace of Inspector Basic. The workplace was launched in 2005 when many of the instances concerned drug diversion: individuals had been accused of utilizing TennCare advantages to accumulate huge portions of narcotics to promote on the road. However as federal guidelines have slowed the unlawful prescription drug market, arrests associated to Medicaid are as a substitute sweeping up individuals accused of shifting out of state — typically inside the identical neighborhood — with out canceling their advantages.

An obvious clerical error results in an arrest

Ingram was considered one of 28 Medicaid beneficiaries in Tennessee charged in 2022, in line with the Tennessee OIG; greater than a 3rd of them had been accused of not being a Tennessee resident, with many instances originating within the Memphis space the place a few of the suburbs are in Mississippi.

In Ingram’s case, Tennessee introduced her arrest in a press launch, saying she “eluded” authorities for almost a yr. Ingram says she did not have a clue in regards to the prices till she received a ticket for not carrying her seatbelt.

“They pulled me over, they usually mentioned, ‘you may have a felony warrant.’ And I mentioned, ‘give up mendacity,'” she remembers. “I’ve by no means been in bother a day in my life.”

It took $2,000 to bond out of jail and much more to rent an lawyer. Not till greater than six months later did prosecutors present her the proof so she might refute the fees and clear her identify.

The reason ended up being fairly easy. In the course of the time she was on Tennessee’s Medicaid program and dwelling in Memphis, she filed for divorce from her husband who lived close by in Mississippi. She says they’d been separated for years, however her driver’s license nonetheless had the outdated Mississippi tackle.

After her arrest, Ingram confirmed her Tennessee lease and electrical payments, and the Shelby County District Lawyer dropped the felony prices.

Most states concentrate on well being care supplier fraud

Each state has an workplace to research Medicaid fraud dedicated by medical doctors and different well being care suppliers, since that is normally the place essentially the most cash might be recovered. Not as many crack down on sufferers like Tennessee does.

“We attempt to apply the legislation compassionately,” Chad Holman, who leads the TennCare OIG, instructed NPR.

Another states do have patient-focused items, however they do not essentially identify the accused publicly. For instance, South Carolina retains them nameless even after they’ve agreed to reimburse the state.

Holman defends Tennessee’s observe of posting a “most needed” checklist for its Medicaid program. He says it is imagined to be a deterrent: “It is to not blast anybody or defame anybody. It is to easily deal with the enterprise that is at hand, maintain individuals accountable and do what we’re right here to do,” he says.

As drug-related instances have diminished, enforcement has more and more centered on making certain that individuals enrolled in TennCare dwell within the state. In Memphis, 20 of the 27 Medicaid fraud instances since 2019 concerned questions of state residency, in line with the Shelby County District Lawyer. And prosecutors have dropped at the least a half dozen of these instances as a result of the proof was so weak.

Holman says his workplace will not overlook low-level offenses.

“This isn’t homicide,” he says. “However the legislature labeled it as a felony, and that is the legislation that I am right here to implement.”

However enforcement is pricey. And Holman acknowledges it prices way more to run the TennCare fraud unit than the workplace will ever recoup from individuals on Medicaid, who’re normally low-income to start out with. Even when the state recovered each greenback from prices introduced in opposition to beneficiaries in 2022, the whole would quantity to lower than $900,000. The workplace has a funds of $6.4 million a yr. Since its creation in 2005, the OIG has introduced in lower than $10 million and charged almost 3,200 individuals with fraud, in line with its personal press releases.

And the speed of arrests has slowed dramatically. It now arrests fewer individuals in a yr than it beforehand did in a single month.

A Medicaid ‘cliff’ is coming

At this level, about one in 4 Individuals is on Medicaid or CHIP — the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program. The variety of individuals enrolled elevated by greater than 20 million since early 2020. And for the primary time because the begin of the pandemic, states are going to be verifying earnings and addresses over the following yr. Million of Individuals might lose their Medicaid protection because of this. It is as much as every state to find out who’s eligible and how you can cope with potential fraud in this system.

Michele Johnson, govt director of the Tennessee Justice Heart, says policing fraud amongst TennCare beneficiaries takes money and time that might be spent on one thing extra useful.

“It might be nice if our leaders would get out of the gotcha recreation and get into the getting individuals wholesome recreation,” she says.

Particularly now, as Medicaid applications are restarting checks on eligibility, Johnson says recipients should not have to fret {that a} mistake might ultimately get them arrested.

Regardless of the ordeal she went by means of, Ingram is bouncing again. Nonetheless, she has authorized payments to pay and has grown extra annoyed at being ensnared by the state’s Medicaid dragnet.

“They made an enormous mistake,” she says.

This story was produced in partnership with Nashville Public Radio and Kaiser Well being Information.