The following article was submitted by Sixth District Delegate Robin Grammer about regarding public benefit fraud and abuse in Maryland.
Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social welfare programs exist to give our society’s most vulnerable assistance to get back on their feet. Recently, however, Maryland’s social programs have been inundated by rampant fraud and abuse, hiking costs for taxpayers and preventing the genuinely needy from receiving vital aid.
Under new federal provisions, states will have to pay a portion of the cost for SNAP, more commonly known as food stamps, if they have a payment error rate above six percent. Maryland has blown past that limit with an error rate of almost fourteen percent, ranking among the ten worst states in the nation in program integrity. Because of that error rate, which is derived almost entirely from overpayments, taxpayers are on the hook for fifteen percent of the program’s cost, totaling about two hundred and forty million dollars in extra spending…