Republicans’ new Medicaid arguments: They’re only cutting waste, fraud, and abuse Conservative think tank’s new report argues Medicaid has high level of improper payments

https://www.statnews.com/2025/03/03/medicaid-cuts-republicans-paragon-say-to-focus-on-waste-fraud-and-abuse/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-8AyFGnLimq4l2wBGYq8sPSdi1_0RS5S9FFGsuM1YUDkpYpIH3vGXNyAraAl4EsGt1mzs3svd9xU9Sb9cj217ogiUJObw&_hsmi=349955347&utm_content=349955347&utm_source=hs_email Improper Medicaid payments become target for GOP cost-cutters If you’ve been following the debate in Washington over how to cut the federal budget without touching Medicaid, STAT’s John Wilkerson brings us a new wrinkle. Republicans trying to find billions of Medicaid dollars to pay for tax cuts now say that any reduction in Medicaid spending would derive from eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse and not from denying care to millions of children, low-income adults, and people with disabilities who rely on the program. This echoes President Trump’s press conference positions, saying “We’re not going to touch it” about Medicaid. “Now, we are going to look for fraud.” Yesterday two think tanks issued a report suggesting Medicaid pulled in about $1.1 trillion in improper payments over the past decade, arguing that policies to lower that figure could save hundreds of billions of dollars. That estimate is on the high side of other analyses, but the devil is in the details. What is fraud, anyway? Missing documentation? Inappropriate payments? STAT’s John Wilkerson dives in. https://paragoninstitute.org/medicaid/medicaids-true-improper-payments-likely-double-those-reported-by-cms/?utm_campaign=morning_rounds&utm_medium=email&_hsenc=p2ANqtz--hul2nd4LLnhLoUfmZwJ_dm1NevFWtAfvmnGDhWUHoND5nQ9GPHvUFDjwWkJtbvi0aSn9vll-fX6TkEjYwPzal59D63Q&_hsmi=349955347&utm_content=349955347&utm_source=hs_email