Comments about ‘State agrees to settle Medicaid lawsuit after 15-year fight’

Every dollar owed should go to actual victims who suffered from treatment problems.

Not a dime of taxpayer money should go to the lawyers.

Come on legislators, show some backbone and stand up to the tort terrorist lobby. Or, pass a 90% tax on attorney fees paid for Medicaid suits, then appropriate the money and collect 90% of it back in taxes.

Not paying attorneys make sense. Let the state continue to be in the wrong for the sake of not paying attorneys.

Why shouldn't the attorneys be paid? They likely fronted the costs and worked for 15 years. If they did not sue the State would have continued to violate the law. Five million isn't a nuisance settlement. The state should have ponied up the money 15 years ago.

$5 million is not a nuisance settlement, but the attornies are nuisances.

Is this a sign of the State Health overhaul Utah is promoting calling Washington "without merit" on its own Health Care?

From my experience with this state and how it fraudulently uses Medicaid funds the state should be stripped of any Medicaid funds from the federal government. There is fraudulent use of these funds.

Doctors and health care facilities will bill the state using medicaid claims and if the state pays these bills it is considered recoverable as personal loans to individuals. It's all done behind the scenes and without any disclosure.

If you do have assets or a home, the state will send you a bill from the state recovery services and a letter informing of a lien on your property.

The state is fraudulently using these funds as loans to those who use it. If a person gets or uses any Medicaid funds then they expect the borrowers to repay the state for using Medicaid funds.

Medicaid payments goes to the state recovery services department, a debt collection agency, to seek repayment by confiscating personal property and assets in perpetuity until the debt is paid. It's bankrupting people who get medicaid. There is no statue of limitations on this debt either.

Does Medicaid belong to the state or the people who paid in to it?

BroJo,
medicaid is federally mandated

The State and its attorneys don't come out looking very honorable in this case. Fifteen years is an unconscionable amount of time to avoid repaying these plaintiffs.

And DN Subscriber, if you think the State would have ponied up without a diligent attorney helping those plaintiffs, I have to say, you're pretty naive. The contingency fee arrangement is a workable way for low- and middle-income plaintiffs to bring a legitimate lawsuit and for their attorneys to get paid. What's the alternative? Would you work for 15 years for free on the off-chance you might some day get paid an hourly rate? No, I didn't think so . . .

The Utah Attorney General's Office is notorious for its efforts to grind down claimants in litigation and exhaust their resources.

It's a common strategy when one side has more resources than the other side.

Still, it's another example of what happens when the agenda of the political class is its own power.

Typical judicial system that drags things our forever so they can make more money.

re: DN subscriber
I don't think we're talking about taxpayer money here anyway. Actually, after re-reading the article, you'll note that this is money that should have gone to these clients in order to pay their attorneys in the first place.

Not to mention that, like Shamrock wrote above, if some attorney wasn't guaranteed a fee for doing this, none of the 2000 Utahns would have ever seen ANY of this money again.

The system, for all of its perceived flaws, works pretty well most of the time. If you have a problem with it, take it up with Thomas Jefferson and everybody else involved with that Constitution thing.