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Kennedy stated that the purge would save taxpayers $738 million in 2026 alone and that future savings would reach an annualized rate of $1.5 billion. Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Wednesday announced the purge of 189,000 subsidized Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP enrollments for deceased persons or duplicate enrollees, saying the move would stop more than $1 billion in erroneous payments to insurance companies annually. "In 2026, CMS [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] identified 189,000 subsidized enrollments involving duplicate Medicare, Medicaid, or CHIP coverage on record showing the enrollee has died," he said in...

Stealing from the taxpayer has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry in America - and the Trump administration is finally doing something about it. From the Department of Government Efficiency to Vice President JD Vance’s task force, the Trump administration has made combatting fraud a top priority. Here are just a few of the most astonishing fraud schemes uncovered so far. 750,000 fraudsters stealing $2.2 billion from ObamacareSince its passage in 2010, Obamacare has been a magnet for scammers, resulting in higher tax bills for Americans and higher premiums in the private insurance market. But the Trump administration is finally doing...

Healthcare is facing a wave of high-stakes litigation that could redefine drug pricing, insurance oversight, health technology competition, AI deployment, labor policy and public health regulation. The cases span nearly every corner of the industry, with courts increasingly serving as the venue where major policy disputes are decided. Together, these legal fights will influence how healthcare is paid for, regulated and delivered in the years ahead. From 340B drug pricing and Medicare Advantage star ratings to competition, antitrust claims against Epic Systems and patient privacy disputes, courts are increasingly becoming the battleground for some of healthcare's biggest policy and business...

President Donald Trump on Saturday called on Congress to impose mandatory prison sentences on people convicted of defrauding Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security and proposed holding state and local politicians personally liable if they knowingly allow such fraud to continue. "Today, I'm calling on Congress to pass legislation to address fraud in Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security programs," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. Trump said the first part of his proposal would establish mandatory minimum sentences for people who steal from federal benefit programs, eliminating probation as an option. "If you steal from the American people,...

Nearly 200,000 people paid to care for disabled loved ones through Gov. Kathy Hochul’s $11 billion Medicaid-funded homecare program will hold a vote on whether to unionize — a move that could mean higher costs for taxpayers. The politically influential 1199 SEIU union would also grow in sway and net a big payday from the new members’ membership dues from those paid through the terminally troubled Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program, or CDPAP. The union vote would massively boost SEIU’s 450,000 member ranks in what would be the largest union vote in history, according to the organization. Critics fear unionization...

The unrelenting rise in healthcare costs has left state lawmakers facing a $1.6 billion deficit in the 2027-28 budget year ... The best-case scenario forecast that Colorado budget writers received in June turned out to be too good to be true. Three months later, the budget picture has crumbled again, economists told the Joint Budget Committee at the state’s quarterly revenue forecasts Friday. Analysts now expect the state to face a $1.6 billion deficit next fiscal year, setting the stage for another round of grueling spending cuts for the state legislature and Colorado’s next governor. The driving force behind the...

WASHINGTON — President Trump announced Friday that all 50 states along with Puerto Rico and DC have opted into his “most favored nations’’ drug-price initiative to lower prescription costs for Medicaid recipients. The president strong-armed 26 major pharmaceutical companies into enacting the special drug pricing for federal agencies to match the rates paid in eight other high-income nations, including Canada, Germany, Japan and the UK. “They all succumbed to the dollar,” Trump said of the US states and others who have now joined what he called his “GENEROUS” initiative, passing along the cost saving to state-administered Medicaid programs covering roughly...

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...