Welfare Fraud

[RNBSN1591]

I work in HH. The pt admitted to withholding information to obtain medical. But as I work with them longer, I've found they have an absurdly high income d/t 3 rental properties in Cali. They also just put 100k on a new home here. They have an income of 10k a month. They receive all forms of assistance, even foodstamps. What would you do if you saw this? The family is one child, two adults. Is it HIPPA violation to report? I don't know how they get away with it, but my state is very lax about checking info. I see the medical part justified for the pt. but the whole family?? It's hard to watch. They have a very entitled mentality. Any advice?

[jadelpn, LPN, EMT-B]

There are programs that give out that much and more. Perhaps the parents are not legally married. The father (or mother's boyfriend) has SSDI or outright social security, early retirement, a pension...could be anything. The child, if the mother is single, would get SSDI, food stamps, welfare payments...so it could easily all add up to over 3000.00 per month.

Then you are talking rental properties that are in trusts. That perhaps were parents, grandparents homes that were paid off years ago and now they rent under a trust. There's more than one person who would pay rent in cash. There's also a possibility that a family member still lives in the house, the patient's parents have a "live-in" and they collect Gram's social security as well. Then there's a whole other part of life where "home care agencies" purchase homes, rent them out to elderly, mentally/cognitively ill people, and collect quite a sum from the state.

Their own house could be a section 8 rental--which seems outrageous, but people do it. The food in their fridge--a whole lot can be purchased with food stamps.

Our local section of affordable housing rental apartment complex has mixed apartments and houses. The houses are quite nice. And parked in front of each one is a brand spanking new car, there's satellite TV dishes galore, etc. It is 10% of take home income after expenses--some people pay $30 a month, all utilities included. One couple I know of purposely doesn't get married, as then the 2000 a month--YUP---2000 a month in food stamps would be cut, and they would no longer be eligible for the housing.

SO the moral of the story is, shack up have a bunch of kids, even better shack up with someone who is on disability, have a few fathers in the picture so that child support comes from a lot of sources, and say your kid has oppositional defiance disorder or some such thing, and bingo....you will not have to work another day in your life.

For real.

Oh, and when it comes time to requalify? Have another baby, claim you are renting a room in a house due to your circumstances, hide all the nice stuff in closed bedrooms or closets (or they are not yours) and apply for your own SSDI for some vauge complaint.

[RNBSN1591]

I saw (it was left out on the table) the breakdown of the budget. They all receive Medicare. She's terminal. I saw three amounts from properties in another state that total over 5K. They are in a trust.

I was there when they were cashing out 100K 401K to buy home here. I didn't want to know any of this. I walked out of the room when they were discussing bank passwords etc when purchasing home here. Not my business. So, because I know this, I just wanted opinions on what would YOU do? Thanks for all the responses. They purposely moved here because they knew Medical would take their properties. They receive 200 in food stamps. I can't even get that and I'm a single mom of 3.

[Momma1RN, MSN, RN, APRN]

There are programs that give out that much and more. Perhaps the parents are not legally married. The father (or mother's boyfriend) has SSDI or outright social security, early retirement, a pension...could be anything. The child, if the mother is single, would get SSDI, food stamps, welfare payments...so it could easily all add up to over 3000.00 per month.

Then you are talking rental properties that are in trusts. That perhaps were parents, grandparents homes that were paid off years ago and now they rent under a trust. There's more than one person who would pay rent in cash. There's also a possibility that a family member still lives in the house, the patient's parents have a "live-in" and they collect Gram's social security as well. Then there's a whole other part of life where "home care agencies" purchase homes, rent them out to elderly, mentally/cognitively ill people, and collect quite a sum from the state.

Their own house could be a section 8 rental--which seems outrageous, but people do it. The food in their fridge--a whole lot can be purchased with food stamps.

Our local section of affordable housing rental apartment complex has mixed apartments and houses. The houses are quite nice. And parked in front of each one is a brand spanking new car, there's satellite TV dishes galore, etc. It is 10% of take home income after expenses--some people pay $30 a month, all utilities included. One couple I know of purposely doesn't get married, as then the 2000 a month--YUP---2000 a month in food stamps would be cut, and they would no longer be eligible for the housing.

SO the moral of the story is, shack up have a bunch of kids, even better shack up with someone who is on disability, have a few fathers in the picture so that child support comes from a lot of sources, and say your kid has oppositional defiance disorder or some such thing, and bingo....you will not have to work another day in your life.

For real.

Oh, and when it comes time to requalify? Have another baby, claim you are renting a room in a house due to your circumstances, hide all the nice stuff in closed bedrooms or closets (or they are not yours) and apply for your own SSDI for some vauge complaint.

Very insightful. This is exactly what happens. And it's often a cycle, with all the children feeling as though this is how to live.

[AuDDoc]

Report it anonymously, but like someone else said, anonymous reporting likely doesn't even yield and investigation.

I left the private sector because I got sick of the constant entitlement attitudes. When I was seeing the 4th generation on welfare who bragged about how they were cheating the system and saw welfare as a job. It was sad and it used to get under my skin a lot. I would routinely go home after my 10-12 hour shift of dealing with such nonsense and go sit in my crappy cramped basement apartment without cable TV and with the heat on 60 degrees and eating my canned soup or spaghetti because with my car payment, student loan repayment, and other bills it's all I could afford, and I would sit and stew over all the designer clothes and latest electronics and nice cars my Medicaid patients would roll up to the hospital in. I was a very unhappy person. I think if I had stayed in the field dealing with that patient population at that particular hospital I would have been very unhealthy.

I changed over to the VA system. Guess what? The VA also has a lot of people cheating the VA disability system (which makes fraud in the Medicaid/welfare system look like a small inconvenience). It was very disheartening to see people faking things like PTSD, military sexual trauma, etc. and clogging up an already overburdened system just to pad evidence for more disabilities they wanted to claim. I just finally had to disconnect from thinking about the fraud and do my job. I report fraud when I see it (nothing is done usually) and go on with things. Life is too short to worry about other people and their crappy behavior. You cannot police someone else's morality. Report it and move on. In the end no one is getting away with anything and at least I can say I did my job, worked hard, and paid for everything I own and when I meet my maker I won't have anything to feel ashamed for like these folks will.

[heron, ASN, RN]

I can't blame anyone for getting frustrated ... But in my view, they're simply imitating their "betters". It wasn't public assistance recipients that crashed the economy in '08. For every dollar stolen by recipients, at least ten are stolen by shady agencies and vendors.