What happened
The United States government loses billions of dollars each year to fraud, with estimates ranging from $233 billion to $521 billion annually. This fraud is often targeted at social welfare programs, such as Medicaid, food assistance, and housing programs. Recent cases of fraud include a child-nutrition scandal in Minnesota, where at least $300 million was stolen, and a health care scheme in New York, where 15 defendants were charged with fraudulent billings totaling over $10.6 billion.
In Arizona, the Medicaid system was hit by a scheme aimed at programs serving Native Americans struggling with addiction, with losses reaching into the billions. In California, a man was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison for orchestrating a scheme that submitted nearly $270 million in false Medi-Cal claims. The Trump administration has made federal fraud a major target, canceling Affordable Care Act policies covering roughly 760,000 people whose enrollments were deemed fraudulent or ineligible.
The issue of fraud is not limited to these cases, but is a nationwide problem. The Government Accountability Office estimates that the federal government loses billions of dollars each year to deliberate fraud. This has led to calls for greater responsibility and oversight, with some arguing that the 50 states should shoulder more responsibility for caring for their own poor, and that Washington should stop pretending that every human problem requires another federal funding stream.
