Free Republic

Henry Hyde had the rare gift of making a grave argument without becoming a grave man. He could thunder on the House floor and charm a room with humor. When Congressman Hyde spoke about unborn children, he did it with a tenderness that never sounded rehearsed. He was brilliant, warm, funny, stubborn when he needed to be, and absolutely clear about why he had come to Washington. He came to defend life. As we prepare to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his Hyde Amendment, the proper tribute is not praise alone, but a clear account of the man who forced...

Last December, Chief Nathan Ogbatue arrived in a motorcade outside the grand entrance of a newly built palace in Abatete, Nigeria. A videographer shouted praises in Igbo, calling him “half man, half god” and commending him for building the palace “free of charge” for the Abatete community. Ogbatue is hailed on social media as a philanthropist who has built roads and housing, sponsors annual medical clinics, and provides food for the needy in Abatete. He is also, it turns out, CEO of California Home Health Agency (CHHA), a lucrative taxpayer-funded company that provides in-home medical care and a range of...

BROOKLYN, NY – Earlier today, in federal court in Brooklyn, Zakia Kahn was sentenced by United States District Judge Natasha C. Merle to 76 months in prison in connection with her leadership role in carrying out a $64 million Medicaid fraud and illegal kickback scheme at her two social adult daycare centers and a home health care company. In August 2025, Khan pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit health care fraud and conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay health care kickbacks. As part of her sentence, Kahn was also ordered to pay over $56 million in restitution and...

Kathy Hochul received $55,000 in campaign contributions from social adult daycare centers (SADCs) in fraud-plagued Flushing, Queens, records show. Almost half of those donations can be linked to two men: local powerbroker Baoli Zhang, and Jiemin Shang — who own two of Flushing’s biggest daycare businesses, both of which were empty of patients when visited by The Post last week. Zhang, 69, personally donated $10,000, as well as another $5,000 through his Bao Kang Adult Day Care, financial disclosures show. Zhang’s various businesses have claimed at least $32 million from Medicaid since 2018, on behalf of tens of thousands of...

American taxpayers will no longer be on the hook for child sex-change hormones or surgeries, as a key Trump administration agency announced Tuesday that Medicaid will stop funding such procedures and therapies. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz tells Fox News Digital that the decision to implement a rule pulling the funding is “consistent with [the Trump administration’s] commitment to protect children from experimental and life-altering sex-rejecting procedures that carry serious long-term health risks and lack sufficiently reliable evidence of clinical benefit.” CMS, an agency within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), says...

Paradise Residential Services CEO Jocelyne Ininahazwe and her family enjoyed luxury Mercedes brands while the disabled Mainers who relied on the Medicaid agency for 24/7 care were living in squalor, subject to abuse and neglect by non-English speaking staff, including some who were untrained and never subjected to background checks. That’s the chief takeaway from documents released Friday by the Maine Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), including a termination letter to Paradise that cited “violations [that] place the health and safety of MaineCare Members in immediate jeopardy.” “[Paradise Residential Services] failed to ensure individuals are protected from abuse,...

Taxpayers are unknowingly paying private consultants a cut of the Medicaid money the consultants help states claim for school-based health services. Federal auditors have flagged more than $1.5 billion of those claims as improper or unsupported across four states, and the consultant was the same in every one: Boston-based Public Consulting Group (PCG). New Jersey’s audit states the firm was hired “on a contingency fee basis,” and the Government Accountability Office has found consultants building school Medicaid claims collected fees of 3 to 25 percent of the federal reimbursement. The more school-staff time coded as “Medicaid,” the bigger the check....

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. halted the distribution of $1 billion to California and Minnesota, saying "Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D-Minn) have opened the floodgates to theft. They dismantled basic program integrity and oversight. We are not sending any more Medicaid dollars out the door to them until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately." "One example of the fraud we found was in the payments California made to so-called hospices," the Secretary explained. "These are places where the terminally ill go to die. The average time...

.@SecKennedy announces the Trump Administration is pausing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota due to suspected fraud and noncompliance. "If those states want that money, they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate."

The federal government is pausing more than $1 billion in Medicaid payments to two states, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said on July 21. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is withholding more than $867 million from California and more than $200 million from Minnesota. Advanced analytics, traditional financial verification and artificial intelligence identified suspicious activity and potential fraud, officials said. “Every dollar the federal government allows to be lost to fraud, waste, and abuse is a dollar stolen from American patients and the American taxpayer. That’s money that should be going to legitimate health care,” Kennedy...

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Tuesday he’s stopping more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid payments to California and Minnesota over suspected fraud. “We are not sending Medicaid dollars out the door until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately,” Kennedy said at an announcement on Tuesday. Kennedy said if California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) want the money to fund low-income healthcare, “they need to provide documentation that these payments are legitimate.” Kennedy blamed the Biden administration and the Democratic leadership in both blue states...

Federal Medicaid czar Dr. Mehmet Oz said New York’s overblown $110 billion spending on medical bills is sickening — as he claimed Chinese crime syndicates are ripping off the Empire State. The TV doctor-turned-Trump administration official, blasted New York’s Medicaid program as rife with fraud in an interview Sunday as he outlined an alleged scheme that included millions of dollars in fraudulent medical bills. “Social safety net programs are being defrauded. They’re being hurt oftentimes by foreign governments or foreign-run criminal syndicate organizations,” Oz, administrator of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Sunday on 77 WABC ‘s...

For fresh proof of how little New York authorities care about social-services fraud, consider the curious case of adult daycares in Flushing. Dr. Mehmet Oz, who oversees the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, puts out that within a one-mile radius in the Queens neighborhood, a full 64 Social Adult Day Care centers operate, with thousands upon thousands of supposed elderly enrollees. This reeks: Over the past three years, such New York senior centers have generated $2.5 billion in billings, with $2.1 billion of that coming from Flushing. Flushing’s Medicaid-eligible senior population grew by 20% from 2018 to 2024, yet...

In a move that will place hundreds of thousands of green card applicants under broader scrutiny each year, the Trump administration is allowing immigration officers to consider whether some applicants have used taxpayer-funded benefits — including Medicaid, food stamps and housing assistance — when determining whether they qualify for permanent legal status. The Department of Homeland Security is poised to rescind a 2022 Biden-era regulation narrowing how officers apply a long-standing "public charge" test — an immigration screening tool used to determine whether applicants are likely to rely on government support — according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services officials....

The day after Pervez Siddiqui’s adult day care center was raided by the FBI last year, the pharmacist headed to a fundraiser for Mayor Zohran Mamdani at the home of the top adviser on Medicaid affairs in the Pakistani-American community. Ijaz Ahmad, 50, a Pakistani-American cardiologist and healthcare entrepreneur with a sprawling home in Nassau County, advises his fellow countrymen on setting up community healthcare facilities, which rake in tens of millions in Medicaid cash. He also introduces them to the city’s most powerful lawmakers at his 10,000 square foot residence in Old Westbury, according to a source in the...

In December 2025, India seized over 100,000 forged diplomas from 28 universities that had been accepted by American companies for employment. In a bombshell report by a former U.S. diplomat, Mahvash Siddiqui alleged that 80% to 90% of the H-1B visa applications from India she reviewed involved fraudulent documentation or unqualified applicants. What is even more alarming is that some of those applicants could now be serving as physicians, surgeons and in various roles as health care professionals across the United States due to decades-old policies that incentivize the speedy hiring of foreign health care professionals. A compounded immigration issue...

There are 64 Medicaid-funded social adult daycare centers packed into a single one-mile radius of Flushing, Queens. Not 64 in the borough. Not 64 in the city. Sixty-four within walking distance of each other, according to a new CBS News data analysis that found the densest cluster of such facilities anywhere in the country. Federal investigators have noticed, and they are asking the question any taxpayer with a pulse would ask. “[It] begs the question: How many social adult daycare centers do you need?” said Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, in the CBS...

A resident of Hewlett, New York, has been accused of defrauding Medicaid out of more than $2.5 million through a scheme that denied children access to necessary nutritional products. Nduka Lewis Ekpenyong, 36, submitted over 6,000 Medicaid claims via his business, Duke Medical, Inc., for PediaSure with Peptides, a product he largely never actually procured, according to prosecutors. [snip] “Ekpenyong heartlessly charged Medicaid millions for pediatric formula that was never delivered, making it harder for kids to get the care they needed,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a post. “While Nduka Ekpenyong was buying luxury cars with...

The White House wants you to see exactly what government health care fraud looks like once it gets cashed out. It looks like an eight-bedroom mansion, game-worn Kobe Bryant sneakers, original Mickey Mantle Yankees cards, and a garage full of luxury cars. All of it, federal prosecutors say, traces back to false claims billed to Medi-Cal, California’s version of Medicaid. On June 2, 2026, the official White House Rapid Response 47 account posted CBS News video of the seized items and tied the case directly to President Trump’s fraud crackdown. An 8 bedroom mansion, game-worn Kobe Bryant sneakers, original Mickey...

BREAKING: Minnesota residents Shamso Ahmed Hassan and Hanaan Mursal Yusuf ARRESTED for $21 million Medicaid fraud scheme