Vice President JD Vance announced he is withholding Medicaid reimbursements from Minnesota while the administration investigates fraud in the state.
When asked by The Daily Signal if this plan should be viewed as a playbook for fighting fraud in the rest of the country, Vance said, “I think you can, certainly.”
“There are certain things that we’re doing in Minneapolis and Minnesota that I’m not gonna be able to do in other parts of the country, because the fraud is gonna be different in each place,” he said. “But yeah, I get this basic model of saying to people, ‘Hey, you get a massive amount of money to provide a service to people.’ Did you actually provide that service?”
In his State of the Union address, President Donald Trump tapped Vance to lead the “war on fraud” throughout the country.
Vance announced the first move in this war on Wednesday—withholding reimbursements for $259.5 million in Medicaid funds for Minnesota pending investigation.
“The providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid. The state has paid those providers the money,” Vance said. “What we’re doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that’s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer.”
Curbing fraud shouldn’t be controversial, Vance told The Daily Signal.
“The fact that it’s even controversial, that we’re asking these questions as a government goes to show how much the culture of fraud has permeated Washington, D.C.,” Vance said.
“Think about this once you heard about people who take money from autistic children. They pretend their children, or some other person’s kid is autistic, they collect a fake check, they don’t provide an ounce of services, and then the very money that’s supposed to go to needy kids isn’t there anymore to help those needy children.”
Vance shared a story about fraudsters exploiting funding meant to provide after school programs to autistic children.
“The fact that we have so normalized this, and the fact that I guarantee there will be voices in the media, there’ll be voices in the state of Minnesota who say this is hurting children,” Vance said. “No, it’s hurting fraudsters.”
“The way to protect kids is to go after those fraudsters,” Vance added, “which is what we’re doing.”
Democrat Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has 60 days to respond to Vance about the matter.
“All we need the governor and the administration of Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you’re taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they’re providing,” Vance said.
“And the fact that there are so many people handing out millions and billions of dollars of federal Medicaid money without even confirming that they’re doing the thing that they say that they’re doing, it’s a disgrace,” Vance said. “It’s defrauding the American taxpayer, and we’re stopping it.”