When the scale of the Medicaid fraud in Minnesota started to emerge, our first thought was that, if it’s that easy to rip off Medicaid, the North Star State can’t be the only place where it’s happening.

Turns out we were right, as the Daily Wire’s exposé of massive fraud schemes in Ohio makes clear. Which means there are almost certainly still more to be uncovered. Which leads to the question of why we are learning about this only now.

Daily Wire is releasing a five-part series that alleges massive fraud in an Ohio Medicaid program – a state that obtained a waiver so it could reimburse “home healthcare.” The idea made sense. Care at home is cheaper than in skilled nursing facilities.

But it threw open the door to fragrant abuse.

As the Daily Wire’s Luke Rosiak explains, “Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries’ homes to perform ‘homemaking’ and ‘chores’ like cooking and cleaning. The people performing these ‘personal services’ tasks don’t even have to be healthcare workers — and in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.”

Rosiak dug into a treasure trove of Medicaid data released by DOGE and found the same thing being uncovered by independent journalists in Minnesota and in California. Obvious cases of fraud. Storefronts that don’t appear to be doing anything other than billing Medicaid. And, as it turns out, lots of immigrants are running these scams.

In the second part of his series, he reports finding 288 “home health” companies in just seven buildings in Columbus, Ohio, that collectively billed Medicaid $250 million.

So now, independent, muckraking journalists have uncovered massive child care fraud schemes in Minnesota, hospice fraud schemes in California, and a bustling “home health” care racket in Ohio.

And in each case, the governors have dismissed the allegations, claiming that their administration is aggressively rooting out fraud and that this is all just MAGA types causing trouble.

Even Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s initial statement – after the Daily Wire’s first article in the series was published – was dismissive of the report, saying that it “does not seem to allege any fraud in the details provided.”

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See Also:

Just How Easy Is It To Rip Off The Federal Gov’t?

For Today’s Democrats, Fraud Is A Feature, Not A Bug

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One big problem with Medicaid is that, because of the way it’s financed, fraud actually pays dividends to the states, which get federal matching dollars for every dollar spent on providing Medicaid benefits. So, if the state doles out hundreds of millions of dollars to phony day care, hospice, or “home health” companies, Washington kicks in hundreds of millions, which the state can then use to pay for legitimate healthcare.

So, how many more Medicaid schemes are out there? How many schemes involve food stamps? Obamacare? Medicare?

If the journalism profession weren’t so hopelessly captured by the Democratic Party, every investigative journalist at every major news outlet in every state would be digging into to see if it’s happening in their hometowns.

But our guess is that zero are, because it would be seen as somehow helping Donald Trump.

Instead, reporters are filing stories about the “devastating,” “draconian,” and “deadly” Medicaid cuts Republicans approved as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

Typical is an NPR headline from last week: “It’s Day 1 of Medicaid work requirements in Nebraska. People are worried.” The Bulwark, which is so insanely anti-Trump that it now makes the Huffington Post look sensible, cried that “Trump’s Big Medicaid Cuts Are About to Get Very Real.”

You’d think Democrats would be as adamant as anyone about rooting out fraud. After all, every dollar that goes to a con artist is a dollar that isn’t being used to help the needy.

But as we’ve said before, for today’s Democrats, fraud isn’t a bug that needs to be stamped out. It’s a feature that enriches their friends and family — and gets them reelected.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board