|
MW Voice FEATURE Letters to the Editor War Editor's Tidbits Mothers news from around the world Did You Know? Corporate War on the People Resistance in the War OTHER FALL 2008 ARTICLES
|
Editor's TidbitsFood Stamps FINALLY Increase Let’s play “guess the meaning of the government acronym.” Are you ready? Okay…What does “SNAP” stand for? Do you give up…? SNAP stands for “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”. What is SNAP, you might be asking yourself? SNAP is the new name for the Food Stamp Program. Congress passed a new Farm Bill over a presidential veto in August. Included in the Farm Bill was the reauthorization of the Food Stamp program. Among the changes is the new name. We haven’t had “stamps” in the Food Stamp program since it went to electronic benefit transfer ten years ago. It was probably inevitable that someone would want to change the name. There’s
been no word from “Crackle” and “Pop” about how they feel being left
out in the name change…:)
The Farm Bill made some important changes in the Food Stamp (I mean SNAP) program. • The standard deduction and minimum benefit will now be raised. It will be “indexed” each year. Indexing means that these figures will be adjusted to account for any inflation in the previous year. It is projected that this will help about 11 million low-income persons. • The cap on the dependent care deduction has been eliminated (effective October 2008.) That means that the actual amount that a mom pays out of pocket for child care will be counted, not just $175 maximum as in the past. • Tax deferred retirement plans and education accounts will be excluded from the resource limits. Eddie Mae
Binion
California Denies Cost of Living Increase for CalWORKS The California State Budget for 2008-2009 appropriates about $5.2 billion of the $6.6 billion available for CalWORKs. What happens to the $1.4 billion? It is used to balance the budget on the backs of impoverished families with needy children living on fixed incomes. These families are receiving the same dollar amounts they received in 1989. Yes, for poor children and families, time has been still. Everyone else has received a raise. The welfare bureaucracy; various welfare industry contractors like computer vendors and private contractors (Maximus, EDS, Goodwill) etc have all received repeated raises. But the 2008-2009 state budget could not find $140 million to give poor kids a COLA (cost of living increase). • Section 30. Welf.&Inst. provides for no CalWORKs COLA for 2008-2009 impoverished families with needy children living on 1989 benefit levels. •Section 31. Welf.&Inst. would do away with the SSI and CAPI COLA for 2008-2009. • Section 32. Welf. & Inst. §12305.82 allows counties to investigate alleged IHSS fraud of $500 or less. Yes. Counties can now spend thousands of taxpayer dollars to find alleged fraud of less than $500. This is the welfare fraud bureaucracy defrauding taxpayers.
Kevin Aslanian
Walgreens Pays $35 Million for Medicaid Fraud—No Criminal Prosecution Walgreens operates over 5,000 retail pharmacies throughout the U.S. It switched the prescriptions for Medicaid patients who were prescribed 150 mg or 300 mg tablets of Ranitidine to more expensive capsules. On prescriptions for 10 mg or 20 mg capsules of Fluoxetine, they gave more expensive tablets. And prescriptions for 5 mg tablets of Eldepryl were switched to more expensive capsules. With these switches Walgreens substantially increased its reimbursement from Medicaid while providing no medical benefit to patients. In Indiana, Walgreens had to pay $381,850 for frauding Medicaid for drug users. Walgreens made 5,446 false claims for patients who were on a restricted card. They were only allowed to get drugs from one designated physician. When they brought in a script from another doc, Walgreens altered the prescription to get around the restriction. In Minnesota, two pharmacists blew the whistle on Walgreens for cheating Medicaid. Walgreens was billing Medicaid for partial cost of a drug when the patient also had private insurance that covered the cost. Michigan, Florida and Massachusetts Walgreens were also making these false claims. Walgreens had to pay $9.9 million to resolve this fraud. The two pharmacists who blew the whistle, Daniel Bieurance and Neil Thompson, will receive $1.44 million. Under the False Claims Act, private individuals can bring actions for fraud on behalf of the federal government and share in any proceeds recovered.
Australia Attacks Aboriginal Welfare Families with Racist Income Controls
Last year some government study claimed that Aboriginal families in Australia’s Northern Territory were sexually abusing their children. The government’s so-called solution? They ordered an armed invasion of the Territory! This is a land-grab attempt of the Aborigine homelands. The Aborigine community lives on and owns land with resources wanted by the wealthy. The ancient rocks of northern Australia contain vast deposits of iron, gold, aluminium and the planet's largest deposits of uranium. In areas bordering the Timor Sea, there are oil, coal and gas reserves. That is the real reason behind the government's land grab. Thus the imposition of martial law. In fact, substantiated cases of all forms of child abuse against Indigenous children in 2005-06 were 19% of the total. Yet Indigenous people make up 29% of the Territory population. Thus they have less cases of child abuse that the white community. In addition to the armed invasion, the government also enacted an economic assault. They call it an income quarantine. They have forced all Aboriginal welfare families to receive half of their income in vouchers! NO WHITE WELFARE FAMILIES ARE AFFECTED. The decision was strictly based on race. The government suspended the “Racial Discrimination Act” to impose both the intervention and the quarantine. It has nothing to do with the allegations of abuse. ALL families of color are suffering under this blatant racism. 13,300 aboriginal people were originally victimized. Now the Labor government plans to expand to 20,000. Not only do the families have no control over half of their income, but the vouchers must be spent in big businesses (Target, Wal-Mart etc). This is a great hardship for families with no transportation to get to the big stores in the big city. And it is a direct economic assault on the small businesses where the families normally bought their food and other necessities. Demonstrations took place in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and other Australian state capitals in June. Protestors demanded the Rudd Labor government end the “Emergency Response” into Aboriginal communities. The protests were held on the first anniversary of the “intervention.” The blatantly racist assault was introduced last year by the John Howard government. It is now being extended by the federal Labor government under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Sources: Star Tribune; usnews.com; thetimesonline | |
| Back to Top | ||
Fall
2008
Walgreens must pay $35 million to the
federal government to settle charges of Medicaid fraud. According
to the Justice Department, Walgreens “improperly switched the type
of drugs given to Medicaid patients” to increase reimbursement to
themselves. Despite the massive amount of fraud, no criminal charges
have been files. (But a mom who frauds $500 is often criminally
charged.)