Dozens of senior care homes that broke labor laws continue to get Medicaid funds

[TexasTowelie]

By Jennifer Gollan


Medicaid funding has continued to flow to dozens of senior care-home operators in four states cited for stealing workers’ wages or breaking other labor laws, an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found.

Earlier this fall, Medicaid funding went to at least 45 care homes previously cited for labor violations in California, Florida, Oregon and Wisconsin. The bulk of those cases occurred in California, where at least 35 facilities continued to receive Medicaid reimbursements in October after being penalized by state or federal labor regulators. That number dropped to 18 facilities as of Nov. 21, when the state released the most recent data. Medicaid reimbursements can fluctuate month to month, depending on the number of Medicaid-eligible residents in a facility at any one time.

Government spending under the public health insurance program still was going to Agape Cottages, a chain of care homes in Southern California owned by Joseph Alvarez, who pleaded guilty last year to a criminal misdemeanor after he directed 17 workers to return $196,000 in back wages he had agreed to pay them and then lied to federal regulators to cover it up.

Also still receiving or eligible for Medicaid reimbursements were care homes in the West Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles that until recently operated under the name Adat Shalom. In 2017, state labor regulators cited Adat Shalom and its owner, Angelica Reingold, for more than $7 million for unpaid wages and penalties involving 149 workers in one of the nation’s largest cases of wage theft in the residential care industry. An appeal by the company is pending.

Read more: https://www.revealnews.org/article/dozens-of-senior-care-homes-that-broke-labor-laws-continue-to-get-medicaid-funds/