The Trump administration has signaled a willingness to halt billions of dollars in federal health payments to multiple states, mirroring moves they made against Minnesota.
The specific target is Medicaid, the public health insurance program that pairs state and federal money. Federal officials have announced unprecedented actions in Minnesota this year, declaring they could withhold over $2 billion in payments slated for the state and claw back nearly $260 million from last year.
The actions in Minnesota came as part of the administration’s declared crackdown on fraud, but critics have likened them to using a bludgeon instead of a scalpel, probably harming patients who rely on Medicaid for care but are not responsible for fraud in the program.
“It’s going to hurt a lot of people if they end up going through with this,” said Sumukha Terakanambi, a 27-year-old who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and works as a public policy consultant with the Minnesota Council on Disability.
“Of course we support going after fraud,” Terakanambi said, but “this overly aggressive action is missing the point. It’s not punishing fraudsters. It’s punishing the people.”
Longtime Medicaid observers also doubt the federal actions will achieve their purported objective.
Jocelyn Guyer, a senior managing director with the consulting firm Manatt, recently told reporters that actions of this magnitude by the federal government are unprecedented, partly because punitive measures against states have “really never been an effective way to address fraud.”
Meanwhile, fraud prosec …