Vance says Minnesota’s Medicaid funds halted as part of Trump’s ‘war on fraud’ | Medicaid

JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration would “temporarily halt” more than a quarter of a billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, intensifying Donald Trump’s recently announced “war on fraud.”

Vance said the action was intended to ensure Minnesota was “a good steward of the American people’s tax dollars” as part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of Minneapolis’ Somali community that prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis and resulted in the deaths of two U.S. citizens and widespread protests.

“What we are doing is stopping federal payments that will go to state government until state government gets serious about its obligations to stop the fraud being perpetrated against the American taxpayer,” the vice president said at a news conference in Washington, where he was joined by Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Oz said it was the first time the government had taken such action against a state. “It is inconceivable that you would take advantage of these valuable programs,” he said, adding that if Minnesota was first, other states would follow.

Oz also announced that the administration was imposing a six-month nationwide moratorium on federal funding for people in need of durable medical equipment, including prosthetics and orthotics. New enrollments in federal funds for such devices would be halted due to concerns about benefits fraud, he said.

Medicaid, the nation’s health safety net for low-income Americans, serves more than 70 million people, including children, pregnant women, seniors and people with disabilities. Minnesota’s Medicaid and MinnesotaCare programs provide health care coverage to nearly 1.3 million people in the state, or about one in four Minnesotans.

“This has nothing to do with fraud,” Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz responded on

The Trump administration has aggressively targeted Minnesota after a massive fraud scandal involving the state’s social services programs. Federal prosecutors estimate nearly $9 billion was stolen in schemes linked to the state’s Somali population. Dozens of people have been charged with fraud in 2022, under the Biden administration, by a team of federal prosecutors in Minnesota led by Joseph Thompson and Harry Jacobs.

Thompson and Jacobs were among federal prosecutors who resigned in January after top Justice Department officials pressed them to open a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman shot and killed by an ICE officer.

Vance suggested that if the state was concerned about the impact on services and low-income residents, it needed to cooperate with the federal government.

“The main reason we’re doing this is we want to make sure Minnesotans have access to the services they’re entitled to,” he said.

The Republican vice president, who is likely to run for president in two years, also made clear that he hopes the state’s residents will blame the state’s Democratic leaders for withholding funding.

“What I would say to Minnesotans is: we want to do what’s right for you; we think you deserve better public services; we think you deserve to have the benefits that you’re actually entitled to,” Vance said. “And we encourage everyone in Minnesota, regardless of political affiliation, to do a little work on state government, because if we had better cooperation, we could have common-sense immigration enforcement. We could also have less money going to fraudsters.”

During the State of the Union address Tuesday, Trump cited Minnesota as a “stark example” of the fraud he said was endemic in blue states and put Vance in charge of what he called the administration’s “war on fraud.”

Using xenophobic language, he denigrated Somali Americans as “pirates who ransacked” the state. Ilhan Omar, a Somali-born Minnesota representative, responded: “That’s a lie!” »

Wednesday’s announcement suggests the administration will continue to find ways to target Minnesota and other blue states.

Last month, Oz traveled to Los Angeles and filmed a video alleging, without evidence, that the “Russian-Armenian” mafia was behind a large-scale health care fraud scheme. The social media post sparked a public feud that lasted several days and culminated in the state filing a civil rights lawsuit against Oz, whose parents emigrated to the United States from Turkey.