According to a Wall Street Journal report, health insurers received double payments from Medicaid for covering hundreds of thousands of patients nationwide. This error cost taxpayers billions of dollars in unnecessary spending.
From The WSJ:
The insurers, which are paid by state and federal governments to cover low-income Medicaid recipients, collected at least $4.3 billion over three years for patients who were enrolled—and paid for—in other states, a Wall Street Journal analysis of Medicaid data found.
The patients were signed up for Medicaid in two states at once, in many cases following a move from one to the other. Most were getting all their healthcare services through one insurer in one state, even though Medicaid was paying insurers in both states to cover them.
Private insurers oversee Medicaid benefits for more than 70% of the about 72 million low-income and disabled people in the program. The companies get paid each month for each person they cover. They aren’t supposed to get paid if a patient leaves for another state.
DOGE head Elon Musk says his team will “fix” the fraud.
“These are examples of medical fraud that the @DOGE team will fix,” Musk wrote on X, sharing a link to the article (and triggering lefties all over the country).
These are examples of medical fraud that the @DOGE team will fix https://t.co/4D6EzUe5mw
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 27, 2025
A spokeswoman for the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency told the WSJ that the feds are working with states to address the wasteful spending.
“Paying for a beneficiary’s Medicaid coverage in one state when that individual is already enrolled in a different state is a prime example of taxpayer dollars being mismanaged,” the spokeswoman said.
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