Free Republic

Largest Justice Department Health Care Fraud Takedown in History More than Doubles Prior Record of $6 Billion The Justice Department today announced the results of its 2025 National Health Care Fraud Takedown, which resulted in criminal charges against 324 defendants, including 96 doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists, and other licensed medical professionals, in 50 federal districts and 12 State Attorneys General’s Offices across the United States, for their alleged participation in various health care fraud schemes involving over $14.6 billion in intended loss. The Takedown involved federal and state law enforcement agencies across the country and represents an unprecedented effort to...

The Department of Justice on Monday unveiled a record-shattering crackdown on the corrupt underbelly of America’s health care system. A jaw-dropping 324 defendants — including 96 medical professionals — have been charged in 50 federal districts and 12 states for orchestrating over $14.6 billion in intended fraud, largely targeting Medicare, Medicaid, and federal health programs meant to serve the elderly, disabled, and the poor. The takedown, spearheaded by the DOJ’s Health Care Fraud Unit in coordination with HHS-OIG, the FBI, the DEA, and over a dozen state attorney general offices, marks the largest health care fraud bust in U.S. history....

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that states can ban Planned Parenthood from their Medicaid programs, reversing an earlier appeals court ruling against South Carolina's bid to defund the nation's largest abortion provider. The high court released its opinion in the case of Medina v. Planned Parenthood on Thursday morning, ruling 6-3 that federal law does not stop the Palmetto State from banning abortion providers from Medicaid. Justice Neil Gorsuch authored the majority opinion, being joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. "To prove that a statute secures an...

DEVASTATING BLOW: Unelected Harry Reid-appointed Senate Parliamentarian Elizabeth MacDonough just STRUCK DOWN the DEFUNDING OF MEDICAID FOR ILLEGALS in the Big Beautiful Bill...AND defunding "gender-affirming care" under Medicaid and CHIP! No, I am not joking! A 2012 Democrat lackey is gutting the bill right before our very eyes! She says the provisions that limit federal dollars for states that give illegal aliens Medicaid benefits require 60 votes, not 50+1. She also struck out limits on Medicaid, Medicare and ACA premium tax credits for non-citizen immigrants, per Punchbowl. IGNORE THIS, OR FIRE HER, Mr. Thune ... The Senate Parliamentarian must be...

Groups like this fixate on the number of individuals with health insurance coverage, regardless of whether those individuals engage in fraud.The left is ignoring potential fraud to pursue its own ideological objectives.That’s the shorter version of a series of analyses regarding the House-passed reconciliation bill released in recent days by the Kaiser Family Foundation. The organization, and other leftist groups like it, fixate solely on the number of individuals with health insurance coverage — regardless of whether those individuals engage in fraud, or even whether those individuals belong in this country.The Kaiser analyses create state-by-state breakdowns of projected changes in...

Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has reportedly handed over personal information of foreign Medicaid enrollees to immigration enforcement authorities. The data transfer reportedly includes names, addresses, and Social Security numbers of individuals enrolled in Medicaid programs in sanctuary states such as California, Illinois, and Washington State, as well as Washington, D.C. Emails and an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press (AP) reveal that Medicaid officials attempted to block the transfer, citing legal and ethical objections. However, two senior advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. overruled their concerns, ordering the data to be...

WASHINGTON — (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration this week provided deportation officials with personal data -- including the immigration status -- on millions of Medicaid enrollees, a move that could make it easier to locate people as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown. An internal memo and emails obtained by The Associated Press show that Medicaid officials unsuccessfully sought to block the data transfer, citing legal and ethical concerns. Nevertheless, two top advisers to Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ordered the dataset handed over to the Department of Homeland Security, the emails show. Officials at the Centers for...

The left is on the warpath over the GOP’s ‘heartless’ welfare reform.Read it and weep: The US national debt now sits at an almost unfathomable $37 trillion. If you run the numbers, it is easy to understand how impossible – or at best improbable – it will be to extricate ourselves from the colossal hole the central state has dug over decades. No less than 75% of the massive federal budget is devoted to so-called mandatory spending on entitlement programs, such as Medicaid and interest payments, while another 13% is dedicated to national defense and is virtually mandatory. This means...

Elon Musk and House Republicans both promised to tackle federal spending. It turns out only one of them was serious, and it wasn’t Musk. Musk, who broke with President Trump this week after labeling Republicans’ reconciliation bill a “disgusting abomination,” might claim some authority. As leader of the Department of Government Efficiency, he was the public face of Trump’s assault on government. Remember him feeding the U.S. Agency for International Development into the wood chipper? Encouraging civil servants to quit or be fired? The chain saw? Musk loves the theatrical: He helped scuttle an omnibus spending bill last year mainly...

Here’s a brilliant idea from our friend, John Goodman, who writes to us: “If you do this the right way, it will (1) save a ton of money, (2) make it easier for enrollees to get health care.”It would also save people on Medicaid from losing a whole day of working instead of waiting in an emergency room for routine care, and provide higher quality care at the same time.Goodman explains:Private companies managing Medicaid (or the state itself) should be able to make deposits to Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) that would cover, say, all primary care. Enrollees would be restricted...

New Mexico’s program is just the tip of the iceberg.While experts have long dismissed large-scale Medicaid fraud as improbable, evidence from New Mexico tells a different story. This discovery presents an unprecedented opportunity to offset part of the $880 billion budget deficit without cutting healthcare services for enrollees.As the most powerful stakeholders, insurers frame fraud as an issue with hospitals, physicians, and enrollees while quietly escaping scrutiny themselves. A 2020 Health and Human Services report claimed that fraud in Medicaid fee-for-service stood at 12.3%, compared to just 0.3% in Medicaid managed care, reinforcing the industry’s message that managed care is...

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) made multiple false statements on President Donald Trump’s economy and the Republicans’ proposed changes to Medicaid and Obamacare spending, prompting a fact-check from the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). Speaking on the Mornings with Zerlina radio show last Thursday, Jeffries repeated the already-debunked lie that “about 13.7 million people will be flown off their health care” due to the reconciliation bill the House passed last month, which is now under the consideration of the Senate. Jeffries claimed: Well, it’s a reckless extreme budget that Republicans are trying to jam down the throats of the...

“Let’s keep this our little secret,” child predators sometimes tell their victims. This apparently was the attitude, too, of a Nevada official who was hiding youth “trans” castration surgeries from parents. This man was also using a loophole to get Medicaid (our tax dollars) to pay for the sexual-distortion treatments (SDTs).This time, however, the dark secret has been brought to light, by an undercover operation by O’Keefe Media Group (OMG). As that organization reported Friday (note: the official, being woke, uses the wrong pronouns to identify a cited youth):Deshaun Eli Mack, a Family Services Specialist with the Nevada DHHS [Department...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Republicans’ so-called “big, beautiful” spending bill does not include Medicaid cuts. Johnson said, “No. You can underscore what I am about to tell you: there are no Medicaid cuts in the big, beautiful bill. We are not cutting Medicaid. What we are doing is reducing the program wrought with fraud, waste and abuse to make sure that that program is essential to so many people and ensure that it is available for the most vulnerable. It’s intended for young, single pregnant women, the disabled and elderly. ”

The state is taking action against Leo Human Services following a KARE 11 investigation uncovering alleged forgeries and false billing claims.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Republican Sen. Joni Ernst was met with shouts and groans when she said “we all are going to die” as she addressed potential changes to Medicaid eligibility at a town hall in north-central Iowa on Friday.

In recent years, Americans have learned a hard truth: “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” During COVID-19, we were told to trust the experts, obey mandates, and silence our dissent. Over time, the truth emerged—much of what we were sold was false, and the price we paid in lives, education, and finances from their false narrative scam was extreme.Now, many of those same voices are repeating another falsehood: that cutting Medicaid will cause Americans to die.Recently, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and 19 House conservatives called for “structural reforms” to Medicaid in a letter supporting...

Democrats are busy fearmongering and predicting widespread tragedy that would emanate from the “Big Beautiful Bill” if it passes, but they should maybe think about taking a deep breath and listening to what Dr. Mehmet Oz has to say. They claim that the evil GOP wants to take away healthcare for the elderly and the disadvantaged with the measure, but Republicans counter that what they are really trying to do is get rid of the eye-opening waste and fraud that programs like Medicaid and Medicare are victims of. And there’s a whole lot of grift going on, according to Oz,...

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there were “more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid.” Johnson said, “We are not cutting Medicaid in this package. There‘s a lot of misinformation out there about this.” He continued, “The numbers of Americans who are affected are those that are entwined in our work to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse. And what do I mean by that? You got more than 1.4 million illegal aliens on Medicaid. Medicaid is not intended for non-U.S. citizens. It‘s intended for the most vulnerable populations of Americans, which...

Twenty people, a mental health business and a church were charged in an indictment that alleged Arizona’s Medicaid program was defrauded $60 million in a scheme involving billing for mental health treatment and addiction rehabilitation, the latest indictment in a series of crackdowns in the state focusing on sober living homes. The indictment announced Tuesday alleged Happy House Behavioral Health LLC was paid the money for services that were either never provided or only partially completed and that there was billing for clients who were deceased and incarcerated. Authorities say sober living homes referred clients to the behavioral health business,...