Decoding the Moment: States Weigh in on Medicaid Fraud
The Trump administration has been making headlines with its focus on fraud in federal programs, including Medicaid. Federal officials have demanded states provide extensive information about their fraud fighting efforts. They’ve also frozen billions of dollars in Medicaid payments to several Democrat-led states and revoked federal funding of anti-fraud units in others. The message from the administration is that states are not doing enough to combat fraud in Medicaid.
How much fraud is there and how do states try to prevent and prosecute it? How have states and the federal government traditionally partnered in this work? What impact have the administration’s anti-fraud actions had on states’ abilities to address fraud and provide medical care to the tens of millions of low-income Americans they serve?
In the next virtual event in the “Decoding the Moment” series presented by Tradeoffs and the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the University of Pennsylvania, our panel of state Medicaid leaders will share their perspectives on program integrity and the opportunities, challenges and tradeoffs of the administration’s aggressive anti-fraud push.
Speaker Info
Amir Bassiri, MSW, Medicaid Director, New York State Department of Health
Drew Gonshorowski, MS, Former Medicaid Director, State of Nebraska
Kevin Lownds, JD, Division Chief, Medicaid Fraud Division, Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office
Dan Gorenstein, Founder and Executive Editor, Tradeoffs (Moderator)
About the Decoding the Moment series
The Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reshape federal health policy have created a fast-moving, uncertain landscape for the health care sector and policymakers. In response, Penn LDI and Tradeoffs’ “Decoding the Moment” series provides timely, evidence-based discussions with leading experts on key federal policy changes. The series explores the implications of recent actions and what they signal for the future. Past events have focused on the health impacts of the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” Obamacare subsidies at a crossroads, new rules for vaccine approvals, cuts to violence prevention programs, and contextualizing the rural health transformation program.
Views expressed are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent those of Tradeoffs, the University of Pennsylvania Health System (Penn Medicine), or the University of Pennsylvania.