Hawaiʻi was under fire for looking the other way on Medicaid fraud but its attorney general and the director of its anti-fraud unit had a ready response.Look at the $14 million in settlements our fraud unit has secured, Attorney General Anne Lopez said in mid-May when Vice President JD Vance called out the state’s record of zero Medicaid fraud convictions in four years. “If you’re committing fraud in Medicaid in Hawaiʻi, at least up until now,” Vance said, “you’ve had effectively free rein from the government of Hawaii to commit as much fraud as you want.”Lopez fired back: “We welcome accountability, but we will not allow the work of this unit to be mischaracterized as doing nothing.”In fact, however, virtually all that settlement money — $13 million of it — came from one case that settled in 2023 but started more than a decade ago.
“If that’s what it is, $13 million of the $14 million was one case that started back in the 2010s, well, what are you guys really doing?” asked state Sen. Brenton Awa, the Republican minority leader. “I think that’s a fair question.”The Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services suggested one answer: the Medicaid Fraud Control Unit’s efforts fell far too short.
