It's simply amazing the amount of unchecked fraud our in competent and/or corrupt program administrators are allowing to succeed.
With Medicaid spending now over $1 trillion a year, the program’s fraud and abuse are exploding, the absolutely MASSIVE amount of fraud taking place around the country has taken the nation by storm. Tens of millions of taxpayer dollars were being sent to potentially fraudulent child daycares and health centers, many of which were run by those in the Somali community. They can run out of small centers that lack institutional oversight and whose owners fear few repercussions if they are caught. Even Abukar Dahir Osman, Somalia’s Ambassador to the un, was an administrator for an Ohio-based healthcare company.
In Minnesota, prosecutors have charged the Somali migrants at the heart of the fraud there with paying kickbacks of up to $1,500/month to parents who enrolled their children in autism programs. Indiana's spending on a single Medicaid program for behavioral therapy for autistic children rose 30-FOLD in 6 yrs; the state spends $75,000 per child per year. Indiana spent even more per capita on autism therapy than Minnesota, where prosecutors have found rampant fraud. Nebraska’s autism program rose even faster than Indiana’s — from $4.6 million to $82.8 million in 4 years. Revenue at one provider, Above and Beyond ABA, rose 90-fold over the same period, from $300,000 to $28 million. Medicaid's Miami field office had made 162 “site visits” to behavioral health services providers not linked to a specific physician enrolled with Medicaid 117 — or 72% — “were not operational at their service address of record.” Florida spent almost $2.6 billion on autism therapy last year, up from about $1.5 billion 2 yrs ago. 50% of all the spending was in Miami-Dade County, which has only about 13% of the state’s population.
In most states, the therapists providing the therapy need only a high school diploma and a week or 2 of training. Yet the programs are shockingly expensive, Medicaid funds up to 30 hours a week of this therapy, at $50 to $70/hr — as much as $2,000 a week per child, often for years on end. And the programs have at best spotty evidence to support them. But the government funding backstop means that neither ineffectiveness nor cost has slowed their growth. Lobbying generates new honeypots by creating or vastly increasing access to government-funded health programs. These programs, particularly when they are behaviorally rather than medically focused, often have dubious or easily manipulated criteria for entry and require minimal participation from physicians. They usually also have no copays or deductibles. Healthcare fraudsters then rapidly find ways to take advantage of a program’s loose rules and enroll stunning numbers of new patients. Fraudsters in tight-knit religious and migrant communities that rely on and are expert in exploiting government programs go further, abandoning any pretense of doing work. Per-capita spending is likely higher in blue state Medicaid programs like New York. Those states are such mismanaged black holes that getting basic figures is difficult.
The extraordinary expansion in these programs raises a serious question about the societal wisdom of spending an average American’s annual pay for a program which at best may teach a severely autistic child a few words after months or years of repetitive training. And the fraud is untenable — and writ large across other programs will ultimately lead Americans to ask why they are spending $1 trillion — $3,000 per person — on Medicaid.
Only if prosecutors decide to get involved do fraudulent providers face any real risk — and bringing federal or even state criminal cases against dozens (or more) of individual defendants is time-consuming and expensive. And even when prosecutors win, unless a program’s rules are significantly tightened, new operators will emerge to scalp it, maybe this time with lawyers and lobbyists involved to be sure they are working just inside the lines.
Medicaid’s sheer size makes getting away with crime even easier. Against the backdrop of a program that now costs more than $1 trillion and has endless leaks, even a $10 million/yr fraud may hardly grab a prosecutor’s interest — though it is more than enough to change the life of the person committing it. Worse, the autism therapy programs do not clearly work. The academic evidence on them is limited and mixed. So is anecdotal evidence. Some parents say their kids have benefitted notably, others see few gains. Some even report that their children dislike the repetitive nature of the programs and had to be removed from them. Bu the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders stated: “Children typically are often unmotivated to be involved in the teaching sessions, frequently exhibiting escape-motivated disruptive behaviors."
Billions of dollars of fraud through healthcare, daycare, and other social programs, while millions of those dollars have been funneled to foreign countries, some of which went to funding terrorist organizations.
Supplemental Info:
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/01/minnesota_fraud_and_corruption_is_rampant_and_systemic.html
https://thefederalist.com/2026/01/13/if-fraud-in-minnesota-looks-bad-wait-till-you-see-gavin-newsoms-california/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=if-fraud-in-minnesota-looks-bad-wait-till-you-see-gavin-newsoms-california&utm_term=2026-01-13
https://patriotpost.us/articles/124045?mailing_id=9642&subscription_uuid=dea5df88-f97c-4c29-b8fc-55566a859679&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.9642&utm_campaign=weekend_snapshot&utm_content=body
https://www.theepochtimes.com/epochtv/exclusive-inside-sbas-crack-down-on-loan-fraud-nationwide-administrator-kelly-loeffler-5968098?utm_source=ref_share&src_src=ref_share&utm_campaign=gv-cc&src_cmp=gv
https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/bill-dagostino/2026/01/08/updated-abc-continues-hide-minnesota-fraud-nbc-plays-defense
Comments Welcome.
The Tradesman
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