Quick Picks: NYC’s ‘Rubber Rooms’ and Medicare Fraud

by Alexandra Andrews
ProPublica, March 9, 2009, 10:32 a.m.

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Quick Picks focuses on a select few of the day’s stories from “Breaking on the Web.”

“This American Life” reports on “rubber rooms” at the New York City Board of Education, where 700 to 800 teachers on probation sit, day in and day out, for months (sometimes years) at a time. Meanwhile, the city spends tens of millions of taxpayer dollars every year on their salaries. The chief of labor policy for the department defended the policy, saying, “We are entrusted with the safety of over a million kids, including, by the way, mine.”

In 2007, Medicare officials shut down 18 Florida medical equipment suppliers accused of being shams, but they appealed and were allowed to reopen. They then allegedly bilked Medicare out of more than $10 million, reports the Miami Herald. Medicare’s anti-fraud director told the Herald: “They may have gotten back in, but they didn’t get back in for a very long time.”

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