NY Governor: In Hospital On His Birthday

Newly appointed NY Governor, David Patterson, checked himself into a hospital today. Migrane headaches were the cause of this recent hospital visit . The Governor is said to be doing well and resting comfortably and will be undergoing further testing as a precaution. Mr. Patterson who turns 54 today will be missing his commencement address that was scheduled at 3PM today at Columbia University. He has chosen Andrew Cuomo to speak in his absence. Mr. Cuomo had made an unsuccessful run for Governor of NY in 2006.

Attorney Gen. Nails 2 Orthodox Jews for Medicaid Fraud!

The NYT has the story on a huge chillul hashem to hit the stands. Two orthodox Jews plead guilty to stealing more than $12 million dollars from medicaid. They owned a Brooklyn firm whose job was to place home health care aides.

The two men, Nachem Singer, 43, and Ervin Rubenstein, 43, both of Brooklyn, ran their agency, Immediate Home Care, from 1994 to 2006, according to Mr. Cuomo’s office. The company employed at least 2,000 home health aides, including a dozen who were convicted last week of working with phony certifications.According to the attorney general, the men hired home aides with inadequate training or fraudulent certification and provided them to agencies that in some cases billed Medicaid for work that was never done.Home health aides — who provide a variety of services, from administering medication to catheter care — are required to receive at least 75 hours of training, including 16 hours of practical training with a registered nurse, and to complete a written test in English.But Immediate Home Care recruited aides from a number of state-certified schools from which home health aide certificates could be purchased with little or no training, the attorney general said. Those included two New York City-based schools — Smalls Training and Counseling School and On Time Home Care Agency — whose owners pleaded guilty earlier this year to supplying hundreds of home health care aides with false certificates.