The Trump administration is withholding a combined total of more than $1 billion in Medicaid funds from California and Minnesota until those states can prove they were not funding fraud, HHS officials said Tuesday.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is deferring approximately $867.5 million in federal Medicaid payments to California and $199 million to Minnesota, the agency announced in a press release. The deferrals come "after focused financial reviews identified claims that require additional review" before federal matching funds are released. Both states will have the opportunity to provide documentation showing the claims meet federal Medicaid requirements, the release said.
"If the documentation [the state provides] supports the claims, the funds will move forward," Dan Brillman, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, said at a press conference at HHS headquarters in Washington. "If not, taxpayers should not be paying for these services or these claims ... Our objective is to make sure that every Medicaid dollar reaches those who need it."
In addition to withholding the funds, "we are expanding [HHS's] exclusion authority," said HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. "Now both CMS and the Office of Inspector General will be able to use that authority to remove bad actors from federal healthcare programs and, in many cases, permanently ban them from returning."
