It’s not just Minnesota.
The past few weeks have made clear that fraudsters stole billions of dollars from states’ welfare programs, much of it from Medicaid. It also appears that Democratic politicians tolerated the heist for their own political benefit.
Yet politicians in virtually every state have let waste, fraud and abuse spread like wildfire in Medicaid, putting taxpayers on the hook for an estimated $2 trillion in improper spending over the next decade alone.
Thankfully, President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans have given states a reason to clean up this mess and spare taxpayers that pain.
In a new paper, I show how Democrats have turned Medicaid into one of the most fraud-ridden programs in America — and how Republicans are fixing it. While Medicaid has long been plagued with improper spending, Democrats supercharged this crisis in the Obama years.
ObamaCare added tens of millions of able-bodied adults to the program, yet that population is much more likely to be ineligible.
The Obama administration refused to rigorously check eligibility, and the Biden administration adopted the same policy, deliberately hiding an explosion in waste, fraud and abuse. Meanwhile, states refused to police their Medicaid programs, confident that the federal government would look the other way and cover the tab.
