2. Health care fraud and waste: Much of the state's waste comes from Health and Human Services, which amounts to one-third of the state budget. Fraud is rampant in Food Stamps, Medi-Cal and CalWORKS programs. In 2004, the California Performance Review noted, "The Legislative Analyst's Office has put the estimated loss due to fraud in the Medi-Cal program at $1.8 billion annually. Some other estimates go as high as $3 billion." In addition, duplicative agency functions are scattered among several departments, wasting precious funds.
3. Unemployment payments: The Unemployment Insurance Fund is going broke because it places too many people on unemployment, including those fired for misconduct, those not truly seeking work, seasonal workers, ineligible workers, those working other jobs, and deceitful claims. Fraud is definitely part of the $7 billion in annual payments, exacerbated by allowing people to file claims by phone or online and easily qualify rather than appearing in person to provide evidence and undergo examination. Unemployment checks are being mailed out of state to non-Californians and are going to illegal aliens in violation of federal law. Other crimes occur when a fraudster changes a recipients' mailing address online or by phone to his own address. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are being wasted each month on the Employment Development Department's dysfunctional phone system.
[...]
6. Workers' compensation: Conforming California's workers' compensation laws to Arizona's laws, for example, would save state and local governments $2.5 billion per year. More savings would be realized by stepping up efforts to prevent fraud. Requiring physicians to verify claims should be the norm, not the exception. Unfortunately, California's workers' compensation system commonly allows 104 weeks -- two years -- of "temporary disability" benefits without requiring a medical professional to regularly validate whether the disability is real and the employer-paid benefits justified. What's more, the deceitful practice of allowing ex-cons to collect workers' compensation based on a premeditated "slip and fall" at a jail or prison must be eliminated.
7. Prisons: The average cost per inmate in California is about $49,000, twice the cost to run prisons in other states. For example, the average cost per inmate in Florida is under $20,000. A private prison in Oklahoma, which contracts with Arizona, cost only $47.65 a day per inmate, or $17,392.25 per year, in 2007.
