Trump Administration's Anti-Fraud Task Force Defers US$1.3 Bln In California Medicaid Funds

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Bernama-Anadolu) -- US Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration is deferring US$1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California and warned all 50 states that they must show they are aggressively prosecuting Medicaid fraud or risk losing federal funding, Anadolu Ajansi reported.

"The state of California has not taken fraud very seriously, and because of that, we see a lot of the consequences," Vance said alongside other administration officials, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator Dr Mehmet Oz at a press conference.

Vance said the administration is sending letters to all 50 state Medicaid programmes requiring them to demonstrate they are “effectively and aggressively” prosecuting fraud, with funding for anti-fraud units on the line.

"If they do not aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud, we are going to turn off the money that goes to these anti-fraud units," he said.

Vance framed the effort as a bipartisan governance issue, noting that states like Ohio and Maryland had cooperated with the administration, while California, Hawaii, and New York had not.

"This does not have to be a red state or a blue state issue. This is just basic good government," he said.

“We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud… We can only help these state programmes if those state programmes are willing to help themselves,” he added.

Oz warned that roughly half of all federal government fraud originates in health care, estimating Medicare and Medicaid losses at around US$100 billion annually.

"We would be able to double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund if we could deal with the fraud issues in just Medicare," Oz said.

-- BERNAMA-ANADOLU