Thousands of Medicaid health care providers still got paid by the government even though they owed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes, according to congressional investigators, The New York Times reported today. A legal technicality is making it harder for the Internal Revenue Service to collect. In a report released Thursday, the Government Accountability Office said that Medicaid payments to doctors, hospitals and other providers are not technically considered federal money because they are channeled through state programs. Because of that glitch, the IRS cannot just shut off payments to collect tax debts. Investigators recommended that the IRS reassess its policies.
