PHOENIX — Dozens of people marched at Steele Indian School Park Friday morning to draw attention to the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) fraud scandal that has cost the State of Arizona hundreds of millions of dollars and left countless families with missing or dead loved ones.
Earlier this year, state leaders announced an investigation into drug and alcohol rehab facilities they said were targeting Native Americans to fraudulently bill the state millions in AHCCCS money, the state's Medicaid program. Some, the state said, recruited Native Americans with the promise of treatment that they never received. Others have overdosed in these facilities or shortly after leaving them, some have died.
Since May, AHCCCS has suspended more than 300 businesses from the AHCCCS system and the state attorney general's office has handed down several dozen indictments.
Friday morning, a group of mostly Native Americans marched around the park with signs, trying to get more people to pay attention.
“I lost my brother to a sober living house back in December," Raquel Moody said. Moody was one of the people leading the march.
She said her brother, Carlo, went to a facility last November, and disappeared the next month. Moody said she searched for him with no success, until her sister Googled his name in May.
They found his obituary... from December.
"He was buried out in Litchfield with just a PVC pipe as his grave marker and his case number on it," she said.
Jeri Long marched along the route holding a sign with Ricardo Lopez's name on it.
“Ricardo is... was my best friend," she said. "We were super close. I called him my brother."
Long said Ricardo went into a rehab facility as well.
"He was using inside of the home," she said. "He had overdosed by himself in a room.”
Many in the group of marchers Friday spend their time trying to find former patients who were displaced when their facility shut down. Others wanted justice for those who died.
But mostly, they want it to stop.
“I just want our people to speak up about these bad places so we can get help," Moody said.