Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California and is threatening to suspend federal funding to all states if they don\u2019t aggressively prosecute fraud in their Medicaid programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As part of his role as the fraud czar, Vance said that the administration is targeting California because the state isn\u2019t taking fraud seriously.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn\u2019t taking its program seriously, but also you have people who have been prescribed medications that they don\u2019t even need. They\u2019ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don\u2019t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration of medications,\u201d Vance said at the White House.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The move is similar to the one the administration took in February suspending Medicaid payments to Minnesota.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Vance said that the administration is also notifying all 50 states that it could freeze funding to their Medicaid Fraud Control Units \u201cif they do not aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud.\u201d The units, which exist in each state, investigate and prosecute Medicaid provider fraud. \u201cWe are going to turn off the money that goes to these anti-fraud units,\u201d he said, if they fail to do their job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He also warned, \u201cAnd if we continue to find problems, we can turn off other resources within their state Medicaid programs as well.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow, we have red states and blue states that go after fraud aggressively. But we also unfortunately have some states \u2014 mostly blue states, unfortunately \u2014 that do not take Medicaid fraud very seriously,\u201d the vice president said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe want to protect Medicare. But we can\u2019t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters,\u201d Vance said. \u201cSo we encourage, whether it\u2019s California or New York or Maryland or Ohio, we encourage people to work with us. We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Addressing the deferral of reimbursements to California, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services administrator, said that the state\u2019s Medicaid records \u201chave generated major red flags for us.\u201d Oz said that the administration needs California to clarify $630 million in billing, $500 million in home health services and $200 million in \u201cquestionable expenditures\u201d linked to coverage for undocumented immigrants, he claimed. They are not eligible for Medicaid, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s the largest deferral we\u2019ve ever made,\u201d Oz said about the decision to suspend $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments. \u201cWe\u2019re making it for a good reason. We\u2019d like the state to at least come to the table and explain to us how these outlier payments have been generated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Democratic officials in California responded by bashing the Trump administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
California Gov. Gavin Newsom\u2019s office criticized Vance and Oz in a series of posts following the announcement, while state Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a separate post that, \u201cOnce again, California appears to be targeted solely for political reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to seeking comment from Newsom and Bonta\u2019s offices, NBC News reached out to California\u2019s Department of Public Health.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Oz also announced as part of these anti-fraud actions that the CMS is imposing a six-month moratoria on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies (HHAs). CMS said that during that period, it will \u201cintensify targeted investigations, deploy advanced data analytics, and accelerate the removal of hospice and HHA providers from the Medicare program that are suspected of committing fraud.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The White House and CMS didn\u2019t immediately respond to requests for further comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nbcnews<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is withholding $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California and is threatening to suspend federal funding to all states if they don\u2019t aggressively prosecute fraud in their Medicaid programs. As part of his role as the fraud czar, Vance said that the administration is targeting […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":57219,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5784,5],"tags":[1189,9301,37341,2488],"class_list":["post-57216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health","category-politics","tag-california","tag-healthcare-fraud","tag-suspension-of-medicaid-benefits","tag-vance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=57216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57224,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57216\/revisions\/57224"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/57219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}