Indiana Governor Eric J. Holcomb joined U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital to announce that Indiana has gained approval to continue its successful alternative to traditional Medicaid—the Healthy Indiana Plan (HIP)—through December 2020, allowing the state to continue health coverage for more than 400,000 low-income adult Hoosiers.

In addition to continuing HIP for nearly three years and making several administrative adjustments to help members, federal approval allows Indiana to enhance HIP with up to $80 million in annual funding to support efforts to attack the opioid epidemic. Indiana will now expand access to a range of addiction treatment options—inpatient, outpatient and residential—for both HIP and Medicaid members to help ensure Hoosiers get the specific treatment needed for their disease. The approval also adds provisions that connect HIP members to available jobs or education opportunities.

“A decade after it launched, Indiana’s HIP program has become the national model for a state-led, consumer-driven healthcare program that meets citizens’ needs, provides choices and improves lives,” Gov. Holcomb said. “This approval continues coverage for hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers and unlocks funding to expand resources to help people struggling with addiction.”

The Healthy Indiana Plan was created in 2007 under Gov. Mitch Daniels. The program was expanded in 2015 by then Gov. Mike Pence with a federal waiver to implement HIP as an alternative to traditional Medicaid expansion.

“Today’s approval is the result of the hard work of Gov. Holcomb, his team and our team at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and serves as a testament to Indiana’s ongoing commitment to improving the lives of its Medicaid beneficiaries,” said Secretary Azar. “We look forward to collaborating with Indiana on this next evolution of HIP, which serves as another example of the Trump Administration’s support of state-led efforts and innovative reforms to make our HHS programs really work for Americans.”

Based on input from Hoosiers who rely on HIP, the state asked for changes to Indiana’s HIP waiver to make it easier for members and health care providers to effectively use the program. The waiver also allows Indiana to expand its existing Gateway to Work initiative to connect eligible members to job training, education and community engagement activities. The Gateway to Work initiative formalizes connections between HIP members and Indiana employers to help fill thousands of available jobs in high-demand industry sectors and improve quality of life for participating members.

“HIP is a program built with Hoosiers in mind and has improved lives over the past decade, including the 75 percent of HIP members who receive preventative care to avoid major, costly health conditions,” said FSSA Secretary Jennifer Walthall, M.D., M.P.H. “We continue applying innovative methods to improve health outcomes and quality of life for HIP members.”

Bob Burgess for www.theiindianalawyer.com

A total of 26 people were sentenced for criminal federal tax violations in Indiana in 2017, according to the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation Division.

In late December, IRS-CI released the 2017 annual report highlighting significant investigations and programs. The IRS announced Thursday that special agents spent 72.5 percent of their time in 2017 investigating criminal tax violations that identified $2.5 billion in tax fraud, with a conviction rate of 91.5 percent.

The average federal prison sentence handed down to defendants in the state was 19 months, with 24 months of supervised release following incarceration, according to a statement Thursday. These defendants were also ordered to pay more than $14 million in restitution to U.S. taxpayers.

Federal tax fraud schemes include: individual tax evasion, employment tax evasion, tax refund fraud, identity theft, data compromise and abusive tax schemes.

“IRS is constantly monitoring and looking for trends to identify fraud,” said Scott Brown, an IRS special agent and public information officer in Indianapolis. “They send that out to our field office, and then we start looking at it here locally to determine whether or not there’s fraud occurring.”

One of the categories reported for the state was tax preparer fraud. Brown said this involves subjects altering client tax returns and, in some cases, pocketing fraudulent refunds. “A lot of times they’ll keep it for themselves and not share that information with the client,” he said.

Brown said his office relies on contact with the public to help highlight abuses.

“Sometimes the taxpayer for whatever reason calls the IRS to check on their tax return,” he said. “They discover there’s a discrepancy between what they thought was being filed and what was actually filed.”

Another type of fraud involves false fuel tax credits. The federal government taxes gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, alternative fuels and certain other types of fuel. Certain commercial uses of these fuels are nontaxable. Improper claims for the fuel tax credit generally come in two forms: An individual or business may make an erroneous claim on their otherwise legitimate tax return, or an identity thief may claim the credit in a broader fraudulent scheme.