RI Medicaid Abuse Puts New Spin on “Laundering” Taxpayer Dollars

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The State of Rhode Island has developed a new spin on the idea of “laundering” money, as part of the cycle of taxpayer dollars that end up in the pockets of the special few, according to a follow-up post today on The Ocean State Current, the journalism wing of the RI Center for Freedom & Prosperity.

According to the post by Justin Katz, some unionized laundry workers at the Eleanor Slater Hospital, and throughout the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals (BHDDH), routinely double or even triple their salaries to take home over $123,000 per year, due to suspiciously high overtime payments.

The post follows an investigative article published yesterday in The Ocean State Current about six-figure overtime payments to government employed nurses and psychiatrists.

These new laundry worker revelations depict the waste and abuse in the laundering scheme where local and national taxpayer dollars are recycled first through the government via collection of taxes, then, in the Eleanor Slater case, sent to state-run facilities in the form of excessive Medicaid payments, with the money then further cycled directly into the pockets of privileged union employees – in this case, to laundry workers via exorbitant overtime payments.

Result: our hard-earned taxpayer dollars legally recycled to lavishly benefit government workers.

The data for The Current’s article and post was collected by the Center, as part of its transparency effort.For more information about salary and overtime payments made to other state employees, please visit our popular transparency website, www.RIOpenGov.org.