Labrador Letter: Medicaid Fraud Hurts Everyone. Here’s What I’m Doing About It.

Dear Friends,

Over the past year, Americans have gotten a clearer picture of how their government spends their money. DOGE brought long overdue attention to waste and mismanagement, and this past March President Trump signed an executive order establishing the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. The results have come quickly: 8,000 active fraud cases at the Department of Justice, hundreds of fraudulent providers suspended, and hundreds of millions in Medicaid payments paused in Minnesota alone. Idaho has been doing this work for years. Let me tell you what we've found.

This ought to be one issue that doesn't divide along party lines. Every dollar stolen by a provider billing for services never rendered is a dollar that doesn't reach a disabled adult, a low-income family, or a child with nowhere else to turn. Fraud doesn't just cost taxpayers. It hollows out the programs that vulnerable people depend on.

That's why I was at the White House this week with Vice President JD Vance, FTC Chairman Andrew Ferguson, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Fraud Task Force Executive Director Scott Brady, joined by attorneys general from across the country. My office has been taking on Medicaid fraud for years. I went to report on our results and to ask the Administration for more tools to get the job done.

Consider what my unit found in Kootenai County. The Executive Director of a nonprofit serving children with developmental disabilities had been billing Idaho's Medicaid program for services her organization never actually delivered. We secured a conviction, recovered the full $154,119 in restitution, and had her Medicaid provider credentials suspended. That's just one example of the kinds of cases we are going after.

Last federal fiscal year, my unit recorded five indictments and $900,756 in total recoveries. Of that, $361,577 came through civil cases pursued in partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Idaho, the highest annual civil recovery total from that partnership in the past decade. Fraud tips and referrals jumped from 136 in 2024 to 219 in 2025 and are on pace to climb even higher this year.

Those results reflect what's possible when state and federal law enforcement work together. Idaho law limits what my office can pursue on its own, but our partnership with the U.S. Attorney's Office has allowed us to reach cases under federal law we otherwise couldn't touch.

Two additional tools would let us do even more, and I brought both requests to Washington this week.

The first is data access. Medicaid fraudsters cross state lines. My investigators regularly find providers billing Idaho's program on the same dates they are billing a neighboring state. The federal government holds claims data from all 50 states that could confirm exactly that kind of fraud, but my investigators cannot access it.

The second involves a federal records law meant to protect patients in substance use disorder treatment. Sound in intent, the law currently blocks investigators from obtaining provider records even when the patients are the victims of the fraud. A targeted fix exempting Medicaid fraud investigators would serve those patients far better than the current version of the law does.

Beyond Washington, I will be asking the Idaho Legislature in the coming session for additional authority and resources to strengthen these efforts from the state level as well.

The people who depend on these programs have nowhere else to turn, and the taxpayers who fund them deserve to know their money is reaching those who truly need it. My office will keep fighting to make sure it does.

Best regards,