Real protection at national scale, on infrastructure agencies already run.
by Mike McWhorter, Johnathan Tafoya and Stephen Hutson
Fraud and improper payments cost federal benefits programs hundreds of billions of dollars each year, affecting Medicare, Medicaid, disaster relief, student aid, food assistance, unemployment insurance, and many other public programs. The Government Accountability Office estimates federal fraud losses at $233 billion to $521 billion a year, with roughly $186 billion in improper payments reported in fiscal 2025 alone.
That isn't a failure of oversight. It's the byproduct of a real dilemma. These programs are designed to deliver aid quickly and at enormous scale. At that volume, deeply vetting every transaction before the money goes out is nearly impossible without delaying aid to the people who actually need it. So detection has traditionally happened after the fact, in a "pay and chase" model. But once a fraudulent payment goes out, recovering the money is slow, costly, and rarely successful. That's why stopping fraud in real time matters so much. Fraudsters exploit exactly that gap with shell companies, stolen identities, and phantom claims, and they switch tactics the moment a scheme is shut down.
