Is this the latest Minnesota Medicaid fraud?

Matt Dean is on a hot streak lately. Matt is the former House Majority Leader. He's also the former chairman of the House Health and Human Services Finance Division. These days, Matt writes about health care-related issues for the Center for the American Experiment. Saying that he's overqualified for the job is understatement.

This morning, I noticed that Matt had written another article on Medicaid in Minnesota. If you're a Minnesota taxpayer, be forewarned that this article might upset you.

The article opens by saying "The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently completed a study of 2024 enrollment data and found $14 billion wasted on Medicaid enrollees who were already covered by another public plan. 2.8 million Americans are enrolled in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in multiple states or simultaneously enrolled in both Medicaid/CHIP and a subsidized Affordable Care Act (ACA) Exchange plan.

In other words, Medicaid/CHIP is likely a cash cow for shady people. Buckle up. We're just getting started.

The Good News

CMS is taking action to ensure individuals are only enrolled in one program and to stop the federal government from paying multiple times for these individuals to receive health coverage. In addition, as a result of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, CMS now has new tools to prevent the federal government from paying twice for the same person’s care—saving billions and restoring integrity to the system.

The Bad News

Minnesota legislators took aim at this problem this year by requiring that the managed care organizations (MCOs) that cover the care of Medicaid patients do a basic check of recipients to see that they are still alive, want Medicaid and live in the state. Rep. Jeff Backer, Sen. Steve. Drazkowski and Sen. Paul Utke introduced legislation aimed at curbing improper payments for Medicaid. Nicknamed "I'm not a robot" the legislation simply asks the insurance companies to find the enrollee and get a minimal amount of information to prevent tax dollars going to pay for people who live out of state, already have insurance or are dead.

None of the GOP "I’m not a robot" bills made it past Gov. Walz. That lack of oversight has cost the state $150 million in fines in 2019 alone. Now federal requirements within the "Big Beautiful Bill" could make the state enact portions of "I'm not a robot" to continue to receive federal money.

Remember thi. Democrats will always do the right thing -- when it's the only option left.

The tip of the iceberg

People who are digging into this Medicaid fraud fiasco think that they might find as much as $2,000,000,000 in fraud. Right now, the estimated fraud found thus far is less than $1,000,000,000.

I don't think it's too much to ask insurance companies to ask these simple questions. Taxpyers should have the right to not get ripped off. This is ridiculous. Minnesota has taken fraud to a new level. Call the DFL's performance in detecting fraud a major failure.