From last week’s AJC

Medicaid rolls decline as new state rules begin
By ANDY MILLER
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Published on: 09/30/06

Georgia’s Medicaid program lost almost 70,000 in membership in the first four months of 2006, after Georgia launched new rules to control fraud.

Beginning Jan. 1, the state began demanding proof of income and citizenship for people to join or stay on Medicaid. Through April, the government insurance program for about 1.3 million of Georgia’s poor and disabled had an enrollment decline of 69,635.

State Medicaid officials said the membership changes throughout the year as people are added and dropped from the rolls. They say the actual number of patients leaving Medicaid during the first four months of the year could be much higher than 69,635.

The officials say they don’t know how many dropped out because of the state’s tighter checks on income and citizenship, but said the new rules were a key factor in the decrease.

At an August hearing on illegal immigration, held by a U.S. House committee, Abel Ortiz, health policy adviser for Gov. Sonny Perdue, said the decline in Medicaid membership showed ”strong evidence of fraud and abuse.”

“Illegal immigrants are getting onto our social system, and it is busting the bank now,” Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.) said at the hearing. Norwood earlier took his anti-fraud fight national, helping push Congress to pass a law requiring proof of citizenship in all states’ Medicaid programs.

Read the rest here. Try to be an illegal alien in Mexico.