Medicaid fraud has overwhelmed the news cycle in recent months. In Tennessee, Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti announced a lawsuit against the former owners of Dynamic Therapy Center, LLC, a defunct therapy clinic in Mount Juliet, for defrauding Tennessee’s Medicaid program, TennCare. In July, a mother-daughter duo in Wyoming were sentenced for conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud after being convicted in multi-year $800,000 Medicaid fraud scheme and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill announced 21 individuals were arrested in a Medicaid fraud sweep. A Washington, D.C. dentist and hygienist were convicted back in March of $4 million Medicaid fraud scheme.
In an August op-ed, Vice President J.D. Vance — who heads the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud — wrote, "Every dollar stolen by a criminal is a dollar that fails to reach the Americans who need it. Our children lose services, and senior citizens go without care. Honest businesses miss critical opportunities to hire up and serve their communities. In some cases, states have had to go so far as to essentially end benefit programs for expecting mothers and the homeless because fraudsters have plundered them so extensively."
That's why recent polling shows 83 percent of voters support protecting Medicaid for American citizens while restricting benefits for people who are here illegally. 83 percent also support protecting Medicaid funding for rural hospitals along with eligibility enforcement.
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has already issued guidance on new federal Medicaid/CHIP funding restrictions for certain noncitizens starting October 1, 2026. "The Trump Administration has a public mandate, a statutory obligation, and a moral duty to safeguard our federal healthcare programs," said CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in a press release. "Today, we’re honoring all three by providing clear guidelines to help states follow the law and safeguard taxpayer dollars."
And the America First Policy Institute (AFPI) wrote about fraud in social safety net programs and laid out a framework to combat that fraud and restore accountability in welfare programs like SNAP and Medicaid. "Such fraud undermines public benefit programs for the very Americans whom these programs are intended to help," AFPI wrote. Their toolkit also put forth actions to combat the fraud, including interstate cooperative agreements for things like data sharing; unannounced annual inspections of facilities and recipients; a single, publicly-available platform for data, whistleblower reports, and alerts; automatic fraud referrals to federal authorities; holding high-risk providers, sub-grantees, and local agencies accountable; an expansion of cross-program data sharing to detect duplicate participation and fraud; block-grant and Medicaid reforms, including those like in the One Big Beautiful Bill that mandated Medicaid eligibility reform; the establishment of single state fraud enforcement units with statewide jurisdiction; provider ownership transparency and conflict-of-interest disclosures; and strict liability for fraud in federally subsidized and block-grant programs.
America First Works (AFW) also emphasized the importance of the One Big Beautiful Bill Medicaid reforms, saying it "protects Social Security and Medicaid for our seniors and most vulnerable, and stops taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal [aliens]."
During a White House Press briefing in May, Vice President Vance said, "So the thing that I say to the American people and I'll repeat here to all of you is, fraud is a crime that has two victims. It has, first of all, the American taxpayer, people who pay their taxes ... expecting that it's going to go to pay our troops and ensure that low income children have access to food and ensure that people get medical benefits even if they're not able to afford a doctor. I think that's a great thing about our country is that we have this generosity of spirit where we take care of one another, but fraud takes that away from us because it steals money from the taxpayer when they pay their taxes and it also steals money from innocent people who are meant to benefit from these programs but can't when the money runs dry because it's gone to fraudsters instead of the people who benefit from it or should benefit from it."
The best way to protect Medicaid, and similar safety nets, is to protect the people for whom the safety nets were intended: the poor and vulnerable. And voters agree that restricting things like Medicaid to American citizens is a way to help lower costs and protect these programs. The good news is the One Big Beautiful Bill has started these reforms, and there's plenty of opportunity to further shore up our welfare programs against fraud and abuse.