Audrey Ferguson has committed…
…what I can only assume (and hope) is a rather unique form of Medicaid fraud—taking ambulances instead of cabs:
Investigators say Ferguson was faking illness, just to get a free ride to downtown Charleston.
Officials say just about every time she asked to be taken to a hospital.
“She’ll have a vague medical complaint, for instance abdominal pain,” said Dorchester County EMS Director Doug Warren. “She has medical complaints that are legitimate, and so until she’s been evaluated and determined not to be sick we have to assume she is.”
Soon medics saw a disturbing pattern and got suspicious.
Ferguson apparently never even went into the hospital to get treated.
Instead she told hospital officials she was okay and left.
So, why did it take over 100 rides and seven years for authorities to piece this together and arrest her? Surely there should have been a way to flag it:
According to the incident report, Ferguson said she didn’t have a car and this was the only way she had to get around and Medicaid paid for it anyway. It was part of her benefits.
And all of those ambulance trips taken by Ferguson?
Each one costs $425, plus mileage.
But it was part of her benefits.
Does Charleston not have a public transportation system, by the way? Seems to me it does. But no doubt it’s less convenient than an ambulance.
Part of her benefits, eh? How many Americans share her world view? It reminds me of college students using the phrase “my financial aid.” Somebody changed America when we weren’t looking.
Had the ambulance company balked early on, it would have been racism.
This is Medicaid fraud, not Medicare. She is 50.
Everyone is being so PC: she is described by all, Neo included, as “a woman”, and one has to sit through innumerable TV commercials and a detailed weather/traffic report before one’s suspicions are confirmed. She is Black, and is merely using one of her Medicaid “benefits”.
Pfaugh.
It took authorities(aka regulators) years-YEARS-to investigate.
In my town, the taxpayer-supported public transport systems, buses, now have darkly tinted windows we paid for. Before that, one could see the buses rarely had more than 1-2 riders, always black, so our taxpayer cost (bus, driver, fuel, maintenance, etc.) was probably not far from $400 per rider. Our new buses are LNG-fueled, and cost about $400K each. Some Federal grants involved, which is supposed to make it OK.
The local RINOs undoubtedly support such public transport because their black maids cannot afford cars based on what the RINOs want to pay them. So we taxpayers pay, to support RINOs, such self-serving bleeding hearts. Of course, the maids all want cash payment, lest they otherwise be income-taxed or lose their “Earned Income Credit”.
Don Carlos: that was a typo of mine. I was well aware she had committed Medicaid fraud, and what’s more was completely convinced I had typed “Medicaid” fraud, until I saw your comment and checked, and found to my intense surprise that I had typed “Medicare.”
Brain glitch. Will fix (the typo, not the brain glitch).
And yes, the chances were very good that she was black, and in fact she is black (as photos show in the original article).
Come on–she’s ENTITLED.
Wonder if she made her calls on an Obama phone?
Mcare v. Mcaid is more than a mere typo. We all know-the gummint tells us so- that docs and other ‘health care providers’ are the real Medicare fraudsters.
Posting the original article instead of the original nauseating link tp Charleston’s Channel 5 would have been good too.
It is dissociation of risk which causes corruption. It is dreams of material, physical, and ego instant (or immediate) gratification which motivates its progress.
While the “fish” does indeed rot from the head, in a redistributive change economic model, it is also corrupted from the tail, where eventually the body is both rotted and corrupted.
In this context, I wonder when and where the corruption occurred. At some point, somewhere, this woman’s judgement was severely impaired.
n.n-
She was born in 1962. Her corrutpion did not start antepartum. Look at when she ‘became of age’ and wonder no more.
This was an incident on Hill Street Blues years ago. Treated as nothing significant, just the po and downtrodden surviving.
This perfectly encapsulates the attitude liberals have promoted and justified. She is no different than every other Lib Dem government handout recipient. This includes the so-called “unemployed” who are really just too lazy and full of pride to look for work and take what they can get. Instead. they make themselves “victims” and force the workers to pay for two years (or more!) of unemployment. I remember when 26 weeks was an embarrassment. Let’s call it what it is. – these people are a disgrace and an embarrassment. They are a drain on the entire country. 266 weeks? Okay. Two years? Are you kidding me! Pick up a broom and get to work, out of shame if nothing else.
I forgot – Liberals have spent forever now brainwashing their minions that there is no shame, except on those who would think they should be ashamed!
And dare I mention the Obamaphone millions; and the food-stamp tens of millions; and the and the and the…..
Until decent people start calling these people out for being indecent and destructive…..
Corruption, it does begin in the head of the fish. IMO it all began 222 years ago. We need a new Whiskey Rebellion. Presidents, senators, and representatives need to keep their sweaty hands out of my pockets. Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, LBJ, Slick Willy, and now the messiah, plus the horse they rode on in.
We’d better take care. Holder and the Fibbies may be watching us,
“We’d better take care. Holder and the Fibbies may be watching us,”
They have been watching us for many moons, this did not start under the messiah although he is the most evil of all. F*&k them, they know where I live. They know your address too. Come and get me.
http://tinyurl.com/3ny8t7m
If you are a ‘clinger’ the best medicine is to laugh. 😉
Don Carlos:
I’m not certain how her birth year and “antepartum” are relevant. I mention dissociation of risk because risk suppresses expression of a corrupt character. This particular incident started in 2006, but that doesn’t imply that her character was corrupted in or near that time. It also doesn’t provide insight into the circumstances which either caused the corruption or liberated its expression.
“Each one costs $425, plus mileage.”
So, here’s the perfect lead-in to the next “liberal” proposal. We’ll “save” money preventing people from calling ambulances to get into town if we just pay for a cab ride, which might be twenty bucks. So everybody wins. The person gets into town and it only costs 1/20th as much. It’s cheaper in the long run.
Isn’t that how it always goes? That’s why people don’t pay for their own food, rent, phones, transportation, medical care, etc., etc., etc. Lost in all the brouhaha will be the question of whether the government exists to pay for someone’s every need, whether it’s cheaper than the other way they are ripping us off or not.
n.n.-
As I recall, neo (or someone) speculated as to how long Ms. Ferguson’s ‘benefit’ thinking might have been going on. My ‘antepartum’ simply meant it could not have started pre-birth at the earliest. So her thinking is a product of the LBJ era or later, when so many rights and benefits were born.
Alas, Neo your wish
“what I can only assume (and hope) is a rather unique form of Medicaid fraud…”
exists in the imaginary world of the working ants.
In the real world of the grasshoppers, this is the norm.:-( As our political leaders would tell us–
“Nothing to see here, get back to work.” 🙂
“The part that shocked me was that he never entered the hospital. He thanked us and proceeded to go across the street to do his shopping.”
http://theemsblog.com/2010/12/22/the-free-taxi-ride/
The unpaid ambulance bills represent 32 percent of the $380 million that it costs taxpayers annually to run the fleet of ambulances.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/ambulance_hit_xGHsKj6FB4JJj4ZSXhjpcJ
Syracuse, NY — A volunteer ambulance corps in DeWitt transported one man to Syracuse hospitals 140 times in 2009.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/02/frequent_fliers_abuse_ambulanc.html
Sorry to cut this short but my ambulance is here to take me shopping Bye 🙂
Has anyone considered the most economical solution: Give Ms. Ferguson a car. A break-even analysis reveals that ~ even if we throw in fuel and insurance ~ it would save about 1/2 million tax dollars, give a car salesman a job, and liberate EMS personnel to care for actual emergency needs.
Mike: well, she loses creativity points, then.
Those are some depressing statistics.
In soviet cojntries picking up passegers with ambulance was a way to earn money or get ghere fazter
Most systems in a free state require morality
Now we need totalitarianism to function
I guess that quote from mackinon was dead on balls accurate!!!