Until the big beautiful bill passed, the federal government was not able to review Medicaid data to determine whether beneficiaries were claiming benefits in more than one state. Amazing, but apparently true. The Unleash Prosperity Hotline explains:
Acting on new authority from the One Big Beautiful Bill, CMS has scanned the Medicaid rolls, and found that an astonishing 2.8 million people were enrolled in either Medicaid programs in multiple states or both Medicaid and an Obamacare exchange plan. Ending this double-dipping alone will save an estimated $14 billion per year.
Estimates of Medicare fraud run as high as $120 billion per year, and Medicaid fraud is, in all likelihood, even worse. Double dipping in two states is the barest tip of the iceberg.
Here in Minnesota, we have essentially no eligibility checks on Medicaid benefits. We don’t even know whether recipients of Medicaid live in Minnesota, so, among other things, we make it easy to claim benefits in two or more states. This is so stupid that even Minnesotans don’t like it. The polling that we have unveiled on our Minnesota DOGE tour and in the current issue of Thinking Minnesota, just now dropping in mailboxes, finds that 75% of respondents want Medicaid recipients to have their eligibility reviewed annually–remarkably, we don’t do that–and 89% favor requiring all Minnesota Medicaid recipients to live in Minnesota. One can only wonder about the remaining 11%.
