Sen. Rick Scott Discusses Protecting Medicaid, Closing Fraud Loopholes at Budget Committee Hearing

WASHINGTON, D.C.- Today, U.S. Senator Rick Scott joined a Senate Budget Committee hearing focused on protecting Medicaid from waste, fraud, and abuse.

During the hearing, Senator Scott questioned witnesses Dr. Brian Blase, President of Paragon Health Institute, and Jonathan Ingram, VP of Policy and Research at the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), about how fraudsters are able to abuse the public trust to enrich themselves through Medicaid loopholes - and how some states are even fleecing the federal government in the process.

To watch Sen. Scott's full line of questions, click HERE.

HIGHLIGHTS

FRAUD AND STATE RESPONSIBILITY:

SEN. SCOTT: "When you think about it, the federal government's goal was to take care of, especially the pregnant women, kids, the disabled. The states have lost focus because there's so much money and the providers have lost- because there's so much money here for the able-bodied adults."

DR. BLASE: "The federal government is encouraging states to discriminate against the most vulnerable. The most problematic [provider taxes] are where you get a local health facility that transfers money to the state. The state then uses that as its payment back to the facility and then leverages the federal dollars. So, it's a way for states to use the Medicaid financing system to benefit the governmental providers at the expense of the taxpayer… In California… they'll pay the government ambulance providers more than three times what they pay the private ambulance providers through the Medicaid program."

THE MEDICAID FRAUD CONTROL UNIT PROGRAM:

MR. INGRAM: "[Fraud is] not a new problem; it's been going on for years. It definitely worsened under President Biden. States are getting more funding from taxpayers than ever for these [investigative] units and getting worse results. Investigations are down, indictments are down, convictions are down, recoveries are down… This is a longstanding problem, and nobody really seemed to care about it until President Trump."

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