Medicaid programs made more than $200 million in improper payments to health care providers between 2021 and 2022 for people who had already died, according to a new report from the independent watchdog for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

But the Department’s Office of Inspector General said it expects a new provision in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill requiring states to audit their Medicaid beneficiary lists may help reduce these improper payments in the future.

These kinds of improper payments are “not unique to one state, and the issue continues to be persistent,” Aner Sanchez, Assistant Regional Inspector General in the Office of Audit Services told The Associated Press. Sanchez has been researching this issue for a decade.

The watchdog report released Tuesday said more than $207.5 million in managed care payments were made on behalf of deceased enrollees between July 2021 to July 2022. The Office recommends that the federal government share more information with state governments to recover the incorrect payments — including a Social Security database known as the Full Death Master File, which contains more than 142 million records going back to 1899.

Sharing the Full Death Master File data has been tightly restricted due to privacy laws which protect against identity theft and fraud.

The massive tax and spending bill that was signed into law by President Donald Trump this Summer expands how the Full Death Master File can be used by mandating Medicaid agencies to quarterly audit their provider and beneficiary lists against the file, beginning in 2027. The intent is to stop payments to dead people and improve accuracy.

Tuesday’s report is the first nationwide look at improper Medicaid payments. Since 2016, HHS’ Inspector General has conducted 18 audits on a selection of state programs and had identified that Medicaid agencies had improperly made managed care payments on behalf of deceased enrollees totaling approximately $289 million.

The government had some success using the Full Death Master File to prevent improper payments earlier this year. In January, the Treasury Department reported that it had clawed back more than $31 million in federal payments that improperly went to dead people as part of a five-month pilot program after Congress gave Treasury temporary access to the file for three years as part of the 2021 appropriations bill.

Meanwhile, the SSA has been making unusual updates to the file itself, adding and removing records, and complicating its use. For instance, the Trump administration in April moved to classify thousands of living immigrants as dead and cancel their Social Security numbers to crack down on immigrants who had been temporarily allowed to live in the U.S. under programs started during the Biden administration.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

“Christmas at Pemberley Manor” and “Romance at Reindeer Lodge” may never make it to Oscar night, but legions of fans still love these sweet-yet-predictable holiday movies — and this season, many are making pilgrimages to where their favorite scenes were filmed.

That’s because Connecticut — the location for at least 22 holiday films by Hallmark, Lifetime and others — is promoting tours of the quaint Christmas-card cities and towns featured in this booming movie market; places where a busy corporate lawyer can return home for the holidays and cross paths with a plaid shirt-clad former high school flame who now runs a Christmas tree farm. (Spoiler alert: they live happily ever after.)

“It’s exciting — just to know that something was in a movie and we actually get to see it visually,” said Abby Rumfelt of Morganton, North Carolina, after stepping off a coach bus in Wethersfield, Connecticut, at one of the stops on the holiday movie tour.

Rumfelt was among 53 people, mostly women, on a recent weeklong “Hallmark Movie Christmas Tour,” organized by Mayfield Tours from Spartanburg, South Carolina. On the bus, fans watched the matching movies as they rode from stop to stop.

To plan the tour, co-owner Debbie Mayfield used the “Connecticut Christmas Movie Trail” map, which was launched by the wintry New England state last year to cash in on the growing Christmas-movie craze.

Mayfield, who co-owns the company with her husband, Ken, said this was their first Christmas tour to holiday movie locations in Connecticut and other Northeastern states. It included hotel accommodations, some meals, tickets and even a stop to see the Rockettes in New York City. It sold out in two weeks.

With snow flurries in the air and Christmas songs piped from a speaker, the group stopped for lunch at Heirloom Market at Comstock Ferre, where parts of the Hallmark films “Christmas on Honeysuckle Lane” and “Rediscovering Christmas” were filmed.

Once home to America’s oldest seed company, the store is located in a historic district known for its stately 1700s and 1800s buildings. It’s an ideal setting for a holiday movie. Even the local country store has sold T-shirts featuring Hallmark’s crown logo and the phrase “I Live in a Christmas Movie. Wethersfield, CT 06109.”

“People just know about us now,” said Julia Koulouris, who co-owns the market with her husband, Spiro, crediting the movie trail in part. “And you see these things on Instagram and stuff where people are tagging it and posting it.”

Christmas movies are big business — and a big deal to fans

The concept of holiday movies dates back to 1940s, when Hollywood produced classics like “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “Miracle on 34th Street” and “Christmas in Connecticut,” which was actually shot at the Warner Bros. studios in Burbank, California.

In 2006, five years after the launch of the Hallmark Channel on TV, Hallmark “struck gold” with the romance movie “The Christmas card,” said Joanna Wilson, author of the book “Tis the Season TV: The Encyclopedia of Christmas-Themed Episodes, Specials and Made-for-TV Movies.”

“Hallmark saw those high ratings and then started creating that format and that formula with the tropes and it now has become their dominant formula that they create for their Christmas TV romances,” she said.

The holiday movie industry, estimated to generate hundreds of millions of dollars a year, has expanded beyond Hallmark and Lifetime. Today, a mix of cable and broadcast networks, streaming platforms, and direct-to-video producers release roughly 100 new films annually, Wilson said. The genre has also diversified, with characters from a wider range of racial and ethnic backgrounds as well as LGBTQ+ storylines.

The formula, however, remains the same. And fans still have an appetite for a G-rated love story.

“They want to see people coming together. They want to see these romances. It’s a part of the hope of the season,” she said. “Who doesn’t love love? And it always has a predictable, happy ending.”

Hazel Duncan, 83, of Forest City, North Carolina, said she and her husband of 65 years, Owen, like to watch the movies together year-round because they’re sweet and family-friendly. They also take her back to their early years as a young couple, when life felt simpler.

“We hold hands sometimes,” she said. “It’s kind of sweet. We’ve got two recliners back in a bedroom that’s real small and we’ve got the TV there. And we close the doors off and it’s just our time together in the evening.”

Falling in love again… with a state

Connecticut’s chief marketing officer, Anthony M. Anthony, said the Christmas Movie Trail is part of a multipronged rebranding effort launched in 2023 that promotes the state not just as a tourist destination, but also as a place to work and live.

“So what better way to highlight our communities as a place to call home than them being sets of movies?” he said.

However, there continues to be debate at the state Capitol over whether to eliminate or cap film industry tax credits — which could threaten how many more of these movies will be made locally.

Christina Nieves and her husband of 30 years, Raul, already live in Connecticut and have been tackling the trail “little by little.”

It’s been a chance, she said, to explore new places in the state, like the Bushnell Park Carousel in Hartford, where a scene from “Ghost of Christmas Always” was filmed.

It also inspired Nieves to convince her husband — not quite the movie fan she is — to join her at a tree-lighting and Christmas parade in their hometown of Windsor Locks.

“I said, listen, let me just milk this Hallmark thing as long as I can, OK?” she said.

Top-ranked national construction management firm Moss is acquiring Tampa-based Ellison Construction, combining two builders with deep roots in Florida to undertake transformative projects that shape cities and aim to serve communities.

The acquisition will deepen Moss’ already robust presence in the Tampa Bay region and enable it to serve clients with greater capacity, expertise and care, the company said in an announcement.

“We’re excited to welcome Ellison Construction’s talented team into Moss. Their values and commitment to quality make them a natural fit with the culture and long-term vision that guide our work,” Moss CEO Scott Moss said. “This acquisition is about building a stronger, more resilient business — one that can better serve our clients, invest in our people, and help shape the future of the Tampa Bay communities where we live and build.”

While Moss already boasts strong local relationships, resources and long-term commitment in the Tampa Bay region, adding Ellison Construction will strengthen its footprint and support Moss’ intentional growth strategy.

“This was a thoughtful decision about future growth and what best serves our people and clients,” said Cory Ellison, president of Ellison Construction, who will join Moss alongside the broader Ellison Construction team. “We found a partner that values culture, collaboration and the community as much as we do. Moss is a respected builder and industry leader, and the alignment between our teams and their long-term vision made this the right path forward.”

Ellison Development will continue operating as a separate entity, with Casey Ellison remaining as CEO.

The acquisition will allow both firms to establish a strategic construction relationship and allow Ellison leadership to focus on the growth of its newly announced ARK Ellison fund, which she leads with Cathie Wood and ARK Invest. It will also enable Ellison to focus on existing projects, including The Central in St. Pete, the Heights Redevelopment in Tampa Heights, and The Fletcher District, in partnership with the University of South Florida, in Tampa.

Sam Ellison will continue to lead Ellison Advisors, an owner’s representative firm currently representing the Tampa Museum of Art, the Tampa Theatre, and others.

The acquisition will not affect another potential Ellison project. Casey Ellison, earlier this year, partnered with Wood on a pitch to purchase available portions of the existing Tropicana Field site for redevelopment in phases, a plan Mayor Ken Welch has said he is reviewing in detail. The timeline for selecting a development team for the site has been pushed back to January.

The $6.8 billion plan from Ellison and Wood would create 863 affordable units, 618 affordable units for seniors, 444 workforce units and 1,776 market-rate units. The plan also calls for more than 1,500 hotel rooms, all while reserving nearly 45% of the site for public parks, culture and civic spaces.