A new report from the Office of Inspector General within the Department of Health and Human Services shows multiple states made improper Medicaid payments to managed care organizations after enrollees had died, which exposes persistent fiscal and oversight problems in the nation’s Medicaid managed-care system.

In addition, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins said late last week that SNAP benefit payments have been going to deceased people as well.

The audit, titled “Multiple States Made Medicaid Capitation Payments to Managed Care Organizations After Enrollees’ Deaths,” summarizes findings from 14 prior state-level audits from July 1, 2009, through December 31, 2019.

In those earlier reports, the OIG found that states made an estimated $248.6 million in unallowable “capitation payments” to MCOs on behalf of deceased enrollees.

(A capitation payment is a way of paying healthcare providers or organizations in which they receive a “predictable, upfront, set amount of money to cover the predicted cost of all or some of the health care services for a specific patient over a certain period of time,” according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.)

The federal share amounted to about $171.8 million. At the time of the report, roughly $41 million of the federal share remained uncollected from the states in question.

The OIG found that despite prior audits and corrective actions, some of the same issues persist, such as states continuing to make capitation payments to MCOs for enrollees who have passed away.

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