Medicaid Fraud Indictments and Equal Rights Amendment

This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. They can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a fifty page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online makes sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required compatibility and availability varies eighteen plus I'm still thinking about our conversation yesterday about the reflecting pool. I don't think we've ever had a better symbol of a failure of government than that. Donald Trump is unable to basically build a small pool . Humans have been doing this for millennia without problems . And this guy, the self professed builder, has failed and I think it's just a symbol of his presidency. This has been a horrendous failure. Anyway, that's what we talked about yesterday. We have a whole bunch of new topics to talk about on today in Ohio today . It's the news discussion podcast from Cleveland. com and the Plain Dealer. I'm Chris Quinn here with Courtney Astaffee, Lisa Garvin and Laura Johnston. Courtney, I don't know that there are two more diametr ically opposed members of the U. S. Senate than our own Bernie Moreno and Elizabeth Warren , but they agree on something that is of grave concern to a giant swath of America and our leadership. What is it? This very unlikely duo is teaming up on a plan to shore up social security by lifting the payroll tax cap. Now Moreno and Warren laid out this idea in a joint opinion piece a few days ago in the New York Times . Right now Social Security Payroll taxes apply only to wages up to about one hundred eighty four grand a year. So workers and employers each pay a little over six percent on wages up to that cutoff point . But once someone earns more than that cap , they don't pay Social Security on the extra income and that's what Moreno and Warren are targeting here. They say that means that most Americans pay social security taxes on all of their earnings, while the highest earners pay on only part of their earnings. So Moreno and Warren wrot e that eliminating this cap would add about three trillion dollars to the program over a decade and they say that it could extend Social Security Solvency for another generation . This pair pointed to a new report from Social Secur ities trustees warning that without some kind of action from Congress here , the fund that pays most benefits will be depleted by late twenty thirty two and that could lead to some scary benefit cuts. This is such a no brainer. We should just do it immediately. I first learned of this situation from my mom way back in the day. My mom was a very early woman into the business world as an executive and she made pretty good money. And when she told me at one point that, yeah, I've tapped out in my social security this year, you know , what you don't have to pay so cial security withholding after a certain amount of money. I've always thought that's preposterous. It doesn't fit the model of what we do in this country. You pay a percentage of your income. Elon Musk, trillionaire would pay a lot more than the rest of us, but it's what keeps it solid. This has been proposed over and over again for probably twenty years and everybody I talk to agrees with it. I put it out on subtext yesterday and people on the right, people on the left, wealthy, not wealthy. Everybody's like, yes, do this. People that said, I'll have to pay more, but we should do this immediately. It's that important . And yet these, clowns in Congress don't do it. I guess they're afraid of their wealthy donors not wanting to have to pay their share . Well, and let's look at this issue. I mean, this cap is becoming more and more in recent decades. Congressional researchers say the share of the nation's earnings subject to social security payroll taxes fell from ninety percent in nineteen eighty two to eighty one percent a few years ago in twenty twenty one . So even though just about six percent of workers earn more than that cap , the share of money we're talking about is growing overall here. And Moreno and Warren, in their opinion piece, cited a twenty twenty five poll that found sixty five percent of Democrats and sixty two percent of Republicans are on board with lifting this camp , including a majority of household s that are over the cap over two hundred thousand . Right. That's the thing. I think most people who pay it are saying this is fine. You know, I hear from the Trumpy Trumpers who say you know what we should do, we should just not let people have it until they turn seventy five. When the sixty five and sixty seven year old limits were put on, America wasn't living as long and people should have to work until they can't work anymore , which is one of the least humanitarian viewpoints you could have. If somebody works forty five, fifty years , I think they deserve a break at the end while they're still not frail to go and enjoy life . That's what this is supposed to be about and we should make it solvent. No brainer. And what is it? Bernie Moreno, I mean can anybody understand how this fits with his general philosophy of just doing whatever Trump wants him to? Can I add in here? I have when you first said Bernie, I immediately went to Sanders. Like I was I just did not think this was a Bernie Moreno thing. And I agree with you that this doesn't seem like him, but this is not a lot of money that people get every month. You know, they get a little bit of money, but you know, it's in the thousand , like, I think it's less than two thousand dollars for most people , but it does mean a lot to them. Something like fifty percent of people who receive it rely on it for at least a substantial part of their income to pay their bills. And some guy sent me an email this morning who says just for the heck of it, he calculated when LeBron hits his maximum deducted for social security and it was before the end of the first quarter of the first game every year . Yeah . Look, this has just always been a no brainer and you get that universally. I hear from lots of people that all say the same thing. Dauh. We've been worrying about social security going insolvent in six years forever . And this fixes it overnight and it's fair. They should just do it. The thing is too , they're all going home to face reelection in the House and a lot of the senators . This would help them. If you told all the older people in your voting districts, hey, we just made social security solvent for forever , they would be overjoyed. That would be a selling point. They should do it. They should do it now and they should get this president's signature on it. It would be a great lift for America . Okay, you're listening to today in Ohio . The Ohio legislature has gone home until after the November elections , but we have a looming deadline for action on data centers that, if nothing is done, could cost us all even more money, Laura. What is wrong with these Bozos in the legislature? We need relief. What's the deal? We all do, and we're talking about electricity costs because energy energies we're going to be at auction again and those companies have to buy it in bulk for the future. And PJM, which is our regional electric grid operator, which I mean, a couple of years ago, none of us had ever heard of this. Now it's becoming regular conversation needs to buy more energy to meet the growing demand. And it's holding a special auction in September. So the question is who's going to pay for this growing demand? And Democrats want data centers in their own rate class. They want them to assign future power costs to tech companies because they're the ones driving up the bills and they don't want it passed on to every other consumers . But this is not something that they decided before they took their vacation until November. It was part of the discussion on that house bill, but because they couldn't decide, hey, maybe we should get rid of that sales tax exemption for these data centers, they did nothing . It's one of those that you just shake your head. They know how angry people are and now it's going to be compounded by a prediction that our bills are going to skyrocket even more and they've already been jumping because of Ohio's ridiculous large s with data centers . I don't get it. So it's in the PUCO's hand at this point . So right, exactly. And the House Bill four hundred six hundred and forty six would have required them to create this special rate class. Now they're just asking for them to do this. And already homes, small businesses and factories pay different rates because they use different levels of infrastructures. And supporters say data centers should be treated the same way. I mean, just like talking about social security, this seems like a pretty no brainer to me. They use huge amounts of electricity, they require additional power lines, substations and upgrades. And this would make sure that the companies using the power are paying for that rather than spreading it across to people like you and me . But the manufacturing association's like, no, that's not fair . Of course they're saying that, right? But the PUCO said in a statement they have the same goal of ensuring data centers pay their own way . So fingers crossed they do the right thing here . Look, we have listeners to this podcast across the state. And over the next few months, those listeners are likely to run into state lawmakers seeking reelection. Get in their faces. Ask them why the heck they can't fix this . Don't let them tell you, oh no, this is about economic development. We don't want to harm it. You know that's nonsense if you're paying attention and anybody listening to this podcast is obviously intelligent and well educated and paying attention. Get in their faces because they have failed you. Again , demand that they give you an answer. Just maybe they'll call a special session, give up part of their precious summer and go and represent you and fix this . You're right. Everybody's up for reelection. Like this should be they should be pounded on this at every fair they go to at every parade they're in, wherever they're passing out , campaign signs. They should be asked about this because it is just like property taxes were driving everybody last year, this should be just as important and next week we'll have parades , go ask them. Yes. You're listening to today in Ohio . Okay, continuing in our conversation about this Do nothing Legislature. They left a lot of stuff undone, Lisa before they headed off for the summer break. Our chief political writer Jeremy Pelzer took a look at what awaits them when they return after election day. What are some of the highlights? Yeah, one of them is Senate Bill four hundred and nineteen, which actually passed the Senate unanimously. This is the one that lowers the age for drivers permits from fifteen and a half years to fifteen years old . It extends the time period of people under eighteen to have a permit before a driver's license from six months to a year. They still have to be sixteen for a driver's license. They have to have fifty hours of practice with a permit before they take the road test. This goes on to the House. So Senate Bill four hundred and twenty one would expand the statute of limitations on civil suits filed by sexual assault survivors from one year to five years from the date of offense . They passed unanimously and it's a bipartisan bill. It does not affect childhood abuse survivors who have actually until the age of thirty to file , and it does not affect criminal charges that have up to twenty five years to file. Another one was House Bill six hundred forty seven, another bipartisan piece of legislation , childcare providers would be paid on their actual attendance, not enrollment, and it limits billing for absent days and it gives more power to the state to withhold payments, suspend contracts, and pursue suspected fraud amongst childcare providers . The sad thing about this is that they do have time in November and December to pass things that are beneficial , but their history is when they come back after election day, they do all sorts of bad things , that what these laws say now could be changed dramatically to be very destructive to what Ohioans need . And if they pass it before election day, they're accountable for it. By delaying it, they get rid of the accountability and they could be sinister and sneaky like they always are in their lame duck sessions. That's the real problem here. Some of these laws sound fine, although I can't imagine why anybody would lower the age when kids can drive , but we're not going to have full discussions now because when they go into lame duck, it's all close to a secre and who knows what gets at it in. It usually takes us weeks if not months to figure out all the evil doing that they put into there. Well, and these three bills that we just talked about are kind of a slam dunk or at least they sound like it to me. They were bipartisan. They passed the houses , you know, the chambers unanimously. So how hard would it be for the House and the Senate to say, okay, we'll pass this legislation before we go and off on vacation because they probably have really bad ideas they want to change it with and make things worse . So we'll be paying attention as we always do in that lame duck session . You're listening to today in Ohio . A Cleveland City Council committee appropriately worried about how flock surveillance cameras in the city feed into a growing nationwide surveillance network completely owned by a private company. They vot ed down a contract renewal. Why is counsel reconsidering Courtney? Well, President Blaine Griffin and safety chairman Michael Polens say this contract deserves another hearing. And this time they're bringing in Cyoga County's prosecutor and a judge who are also on board with the Flock proposal and they're going to try to persuade the safety committee into a different conclusion than they reached last time . So like you said, when the safety committee voted last week against renewing the flock contract, Palentik was the only one to vote in favor of it, but there were three council members absent and they want another bite at this apple. This will give Mayor Justin Bibb another chance to defend the one year renewal . Palensic called the first presentation lackluster. So perhaps Palensic's looking for a better kind of persuasive argument to get the rest of the committee on board . But we've seen a lot of public pushback on these cameras. And I'm really curious curious , you know, where city council might be going with this. Like if Griffin wants this to pass, he could pressure those three council members who weren't there last time to be there this time and that could change the ultimate outc ome of the vote. The huge problem with this is that the people pushing for it are of the mind that the ends justify the means no matter how dangerous the means are. I get it. Having these cameras in the hands of law enforcement helps them solve crimes. That's true, but Flock Cameras is a private for profit company that we can see a permeable security system . There is no safety here, and that's why people are opposed. They don't like the idea of a North Korea China style surveillance system in the hands of people who make money by selling it. And if you're the prosecutor, you're the judge that like having this ability , then come up with a solution that puts it in the hands of people that can be trusted. That's the problem. They're just saying, well, we don't care about that. We don't care what becomes of a nationwide surveillance system. We don't care if we become North Korea where we can track the movement of everybody all the time, we just want to solve some crimes. That's not looking at the greater good. Shame on them for not coming into city council saying, look, we get your concerns. Let's work together on a better solution . You know, last week really, to me, Chris felt like a moment where city council listened to a huge upswell residents worried about the privacy concerns and the police surveillance concerns here. And like you said, the private company's role in holding all of this data. With these cameras around the city , a camera's pretty much tracking your car wherever you might want to travel in Cleveland and across the county at this point. And it felt like the safety committee listened to residents last time. I'm interested to see if prosecutor Michael Malley and Caio County Judge David Matthiah are going to be able to persuade the committee to change their mind . On the other side of things in Griffin and Palensic's mind, they're proposing some olive branches here to try to make this more palatable. One of the solutions is letting each of city council's fifteen members decide whether they want flock cameras in their ward or not . And Griffin also floated guardrails similar to some that are out in Shaker Heights that you, know bas,ically block outside police departments that violate Cleveland's rules about it's like tapping into its flock data . But I don't the fifteen deciding to allowing council members to decide whether you have cameras in your ward or not to me at least feels kind of like a cheap solution. City residents are moving across the city I have a decision city wide here. You can put all the rules in you want. We have already shown that they don't work . Many cities had rules about not using infrmigration. It's been used for immigration. You cannot count on this company to do what it's supposed to do and there's no consequences for anybody who breaks the rules. I'm so weary of elected leaders that are lazy. There is a path to what everybody wants , but it takes work. Govern isor hard . And instead of sitting down to say, okay, we have a problem here with Flock Cameras and a private nonprofit company or private for profit company doing it, let's figure out another way. They just want to rubber stamp it and give them what they want. They're lazy. Get together , do the hard work you're elected to do, and come up with a solution that is palatable to the people of Cleveland. I'm just so tired of the way this goes. They're all buckling. Oh , we might not solve a murder. Let's just trample on everybody's privacy rights and not think the hard thoughts. I mean, it's a huge dragnet every day for people who haven't done anything wrong . I think councilman Tan Mei Shah put it this way. Flats like collecting DNA evidence on every resident and stored in a database run by a private company. Does that feel good to Clevelanders? It's amazing. You're listening to today in Ohio . When Dennis Kusinich sued Cleveland. com and the plane dealer almost five years ago, he claimed we defamed him by linking him to First Energy, which we now know, is one of the worst companies in the history of Ohio, pleaded guilty to funding the biggest corruption case ever in Ohio history . What do we say, Laura, in our latest filing to finally dismiss this case about what had been previously unknown publicly about Kusinich's multiple ties to First Energy . So the filing says that not only did Kusinitic rece ive campaign donations from Mr. George, but leveraged that friendship to have meetings with high level first energy executives and pitched a lot of business and investment opportunities. And he was paid to consult on first energy's behalf with respect to developing commercial traffic safety products and some state and national legislative efforts. So kind of a mini web like string web here of connections between Kusinich and First Energy . Yeah, and I want to point out even with this filing, we don't say that First Energy paid money directly to Kusinich or to his campaign . The money that went to his campaign came from Tony George, a top agent of First Energy , who was also helping Dennis Kusinich, according to our filing , make pitches to First Energy about investing in his ventures. What's strange about this is the whole thrust of his case he has no case. He has to prove malice. He has to prove damages. There is no case. Anybody who reads this filing could see this was always a frivolous case. It's why we will not go into mediation . We won't make any kind of settlement. There isn't a case here . But his point was you're tying me to this horrible company and that's defaming me. And it turns out because of the lawsuit now people know a lot more about what his ties to this company are which was counterproductive to what he was trying to say. I've never understood this lawsuit from day one. This filing is very clear cut. it's been it was filed last week. I hope this case finally and rightfully gets thrown out because it's been frivolous from day one. Yeah, the filing asked the judge, the visiting judge to toss out the lawsuit and grant summary judgment because of these arguments that he said himself that there are these ties and that Kusinich met with First Energy officials several times between twenty eighteen and twenty twenty . He was seeking multimillion dollar investments. So this is all coming from his own words and the filing is kind of packaging this and saying there is no case here . You're listening to today in Ohio. Lisa, how much money does a group of church leaders say will be taken out of citizen banked branches in the region if the bank does not stop helping IC? This is a group called Greater Cleveland Congregations, which represents thirty seven faith groups across Cuyhoga County . So they will announce tomorrow their not with our money pledge outside the Citizens Bank at Warrensville and Cedar Roads and University Heights. They're pledging to withdraw one point three million from the bank if citizens doesn't end its ties to immigration detention center companies, Core Civic and Geogroup The congregation executive director Keisha Crumb says there are seventeen individual and organization account holders, including churches, nonprofits, business residents that are part of this pledge to take their money out of the bank . Citizens Bank has been a lender to both of these groups, Korsivic and Geo Group . They two point billion dollars two billion dollars in loans and credit facilities have gone to these companies in recent years from the bank. Bank spokesman Rory She in claims that we're not committed to communities, you know, the claim that we're not committed to communities is untrue, but he says it's not our place to set public policy. We need to follow the law and apply standards consistently to all customers. Now this is part of a national campaign by the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization, and their pledge is tod withraw twenty two million dollars. They've already taken three million dollars out. It's odd in America how one entity becomes the lightning rod for it. I'm sure there are other banks that have provided financing to these companies. Banks are in the business of providing financing, but citizens now finds itself in the crosshairs of this protest movement, which must be challenging because it's a competitive environment. It is, but you know, people are learning that you vote with your money. I mean nothing, if nothing else helps, you just say, I'm taking my money. I'm kind of applauding it, but I see what you're saying. I mean, you know, yes , they happen to choose Citizens Bank, but this might be something that expands over time to other entities. Okay, you're listening to today in Ohio. Dave Yos replacement in the attorney general's office is coming across more and more like a tool of fringe right wing zealots who keep trying and failing to convince America that we are beset by Medicaid fraud. Courtney, what's the latest evidence of how far this guy will go to blow up the most minor transgressions into evidence of some boogeyman fraud problem ? Well, we got an announcement talking about six new Medicaid fraud indictments that the AG's office is holding up as part of this national DOJ healthcare fraud, Medicaid fraud crackdown. And these new cases that the AG Office announced , they add up to about three hundred twenty seven thousand in alleged Medicaid losses . Most of that sum comes from two cases. One of them is a Westerville doctor accused of billing Medicaid about two hundred grand for fabricated services . And the other is a Cincinnati area home health provider accused of billing about one hundred grand for services . She couldn't have provided because she was also working a full time job time wise. That's what the AG is talking about here along with four other cases that are kind of far smaller in the dollar amount. There's three alleged losses under two grand and one that was worth about thirteen thousand dollars . Right. If the AG wanted to put out a press release saying, We have a doctor that took two hundred thousand dollars of tax money by being fraudulent . Okay, that's that's a big enough sum where you could say, okay, they got one . The four people that we're talking seventeen hundred dollars or eleven hundred dollars , that's just nonsense to put that into a press release that says six people charged in fraud costing Ohioans a gigantic sum of money because it's not six Ohio, it's and six people charged . It's one or two people charged and you had four people who got minor amounts of money and it could have been paperwork errors. But this isn't his first one. He's only been in this job for about a month and he's already lumping this on , pounding the drum, fraud, fraud, fraud, and it's just not there. And shame on him . That's not what your job is. You're a caretaker of the job for six months, just go do the job. Don't become part of the ridiculous nonsense coming from the most fringe right wing side of the Republican party. You know, Chris, like, what if the AG's office treated every matter of gun violence like that? And we got a billion press releases all the time about little cases they're prosecuting. That's the AG's job. Like I'm glad the AG's doing their job, I guess, on these little things, but you're right. Does it really warrant a big announcement and trumped up kind of fanfare around it? Do you know how many cases there are in Ohio of people being charged with taking less than two thousand dollars We're not getting press releases on all the other kinds of cases like that. He's just trying to pound and sound the bugle, Medicaid fraud, Medicaid fraud. And it's not working. They've been trying so hard to divert attention from data centers and property taxes and private school vouchers. It's not working . This he's not even running for the office . Why is he playing into that nonsense? Why not have some dignity, do a good job for six months and have Ohio celebrate that at least we had one public servant that didn't get caught up in the nonsense . You're listening to today in Ohio . Laura, will Ohio voters ever get to approve an equal rights amendment to the state constitution? I feel like this is like a Cleveland sports team, like maybe next year , but no, not a twenty twenty seven ballot we're aiming for now at the equal Ohio equal rights and their campaign is concentrating on that because it's a really high cost to market during a midterm election year. They want volunteers to have the time and space during this busy campaign season and put forth the strongest possible campaign to secure lasting constitutional protection for all Ohioans. I mean, what it really sounds like is they couldn't get this done because they need four hundred thousand signatures. We know that's a really tough bar to reach. We've had a bunch of other campaigns so far this year, they basically stood down and said they could not do it. They want equal rights protection explicitly guaranteed in the Ohio Constitution . But the thing is, this is actually two ballot issues . So they have to do it twice for all the stuff. It's a this is a difficult task . And I don't I don't know that in our current political climate they'll get much political backing. I mean, it's it's sad. I can't believe we're still talking about an equal rights amendment all these years later. It seems like so automatic, right? Of course there should be an equal rights amendment. And yet it's not . No I know. The whole Phillip Staffly thing is just like akes me want to scream . But this is sad that we are not there yet. It's I don't think on the top of people's minds we talked about the data centers, right? Like people are angry about a lot of things and I don't think this is the top of mind for many of them. I think in Ohio, you'd have a better chance of rushing in a trad wife rights amendment. Oh my god Equal rights amendment. Geez . It's just it's silly that we're still talking about this. It seems like it should be so automatic . You're listening. Maybe that's what people think though. They're like, this is already a thing. We're not fighting this battle anymore, but it would be nice to get it in the Constitution. You listening to today in Ohio, that does it for the Wednesday episode. Thanks, Courtney. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Laura. Thank you for being here. We'll be back Thursday to talk about the news