State officials take down a respected health care facility because they were too successful.

Despite the recent atrocities in New York that caused the removal of a now former Governor, Eliot Spitzer, what most people are unaware of is that the corruption doesn't stop there. The State of New York has been trying to lower its Medicaid spending for a while. The Medicaid system provides a health care benefit to the indigent population, funded in part by the State. However, behind closed doors, the State recognizes that the indigent population is predominately a population that doesn't vote, so depriving them of benefits usually doesn't have many consequences to politicians.

When figuring the majority of the Medicaid expense, it doesn't take too much to determine that most of the money is going toward paying for substance abuse treatment. Statistics indicate that a large portion of the Medicaid population require some type of alcohol and/or drug treatment. Therefore, State politicians found that an inordinate amount of Medicaid dollars were going to substance abuse treatment facilities. These facilities aren't billing Medicaid illegally. It just so happens that a great number of patients covered under the Medicaid program require alcohol/drug treatment.

Since politicians are not known for their business skills or ability to properly manage money, New York State officials, in their infinite wisdom, felt that the only way to control Medicaid spending was the take down the medical facilities that were billing the most. It didn't matter to the State that these facilities were billing Medicaid legally, nor did it matter to them that patients were actually getting better by receiving the treatment services that they needed. Behind the scenes, the State launched a diabolical plan to systematically destroy large alcohol and drug treatment centers in New York in an effort to cut spending.

Crossings Recovery Centers was one of the State's victims. Crossings was the largest provider of outpatient substance abuse treatment on Long Island up until 2006 when the New York State of Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Services (OASAS) conjured up some bogus charges, devising an excuse to shut the agency down. Up until then, Crossings had not had any blemishes on its record in the almost 2 decades that their clinics had been in existence. In an effort to justify their unlawful actions, the State of New York had to claim that Crossings had numerous violations but the fact is, Crossings was targeted in accordance with the State's efforts to bring down agencies that were successful.

Frank Buonanotte, the former CEO of Crossings Recovery Centers is in the process of suing OASAS, the State of New York and Henry Zwack, who was the State's spin doctor. At the time, Zwack was the head of the General Counsels office at OASAS. Prior to that, Zwack was ousted from his position as County Executive of Rensselaer County as a result of several counts of corruption. Henry Zwack had 15 indictments under his belt before he participated in the deliberate destruction of Crossings. Now Zwack is a judge in the New York State Court of Claims. Who knows how much havoc he's causing there.

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