Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes on Thursday announced that Medicaid fraud plunged by sweeping margins in the state following a three-year crackdown on crime. In May 2023, Mayes and Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) began aggressively targeting fraud in the American Indian Health Plan, which is funded and administered by Arizona’s Medicaid program, AHCCCS. Mayes said the inquiry targeted fraudulent sober living homes and treatment providers, described as one of the largest fraud schemes in Arizona history. Since the crackdown sparked, behavioral health code billing for the American Indian Health Plan has dropped by 92%, from $3.1 billion to roughly $230 million, according to the attorney general’s office. “For the past three years, my office has made it a top priority to hunt down and prosecute the criminals who stole from Arizona’s Medicaid program while exploiting some of our most vulnerable residents,” Mayes said in a statement. “We are not done. We will continue to pursue individuals and entities that participated in this fraud.”
Though officials say Arizona has made strides, the Trump administration has continued to target the state as prime territory for health fraud. In April, the Justice Department named Arizona as one of several states being probed by the agency’s “West Coast Strike Force,” saying that fraud schemes uncovered thus far are worth over a billion dollars of taxpayer money. Earlier this month, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said Arizona is one of the states it has heightened oversight over, due to “newly enrolled Medicare hospice providers … with elevated fraud risk.”
