Pallone: Republicans Claim "Fraud" as Cover to Dismantle Medicaid
Washington, D.C. – Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) delivered the following opening remarks at an Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee hearing on “State Medicaid Program Integrity: Examining Fraud Risks and Oversight Deficiencies:”
Nearly a year ago, Republicans passed their Big Ugly Bill that included the largest health care cuts in American history. Republicans’ cut health care by $1 trillion, which is expected to rip health care away from 15 million Americans. According to a recent study, five million Americans have already lost their health insurance as a result of these cuts – and unfortunately, this is just the beginning.
During the markup of the Big Ugly Bill, Committee Republicans repeatedly insisted that the cuts wouldn’t hurt patients and would only affect waste, fraud, and abuse in the program. That has proven to be completely false, but they knew that at the time. You cannot cut health care by $1 trillion and not impact millions of people’s health care.
Earlier this month, the Trump Administration released a rule showing just how burdensome and cruel the new requirements to receive care through Medicaid would be. That rule includes a provision that those receiving ongoing treatment for cancer could lose their Medicaid coverage if they don’t jump through all the hoops and red tape that Republicans put in their way. Even cancer patients are under attack by Republican cuts to their health care.
The Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill was never going to strengthen Medicaid, as they claimed. It was just another step in the Republican campaign to dismantle it.
Now, as Republicans try to figure out a way to pay for President Trump’s reckless war of choice with Iran through another partisan reconciliation bill, they are reportedly considering even more cuts to Medicaid. More than 70 million Americans who are disabled or chronically ill, elderly, or children rely on Medicaid for their health care. The Trump Administration and Republicans in Congress continue to find ways to endanger or take away that care. They’ve decided that if they simply say they’re eliminating fraud in Medicaid then they can get away with eliminating Medicaid. They are wrong.
The attacks on health care don’t stop with the Big Ugly Bill. The Department of Justice just ripped up decades worth of guidance and precedent that helped keep those with disabilities out of institutions. And the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has selectively abandoned its practice of working in partnership with states to administer the Medicaid program. It is becoming increasingly clear that under Dr. Oz, CMS does not intend to work with states in good faith, particularly states that did not vote for President Trump.
In California, for example, CMS has deferred $1.34 billion in quarterly payments to the state—mostly for home and community-based services—solely based on how quickly the program has grown. If the goal was finding fraud, CMS would identify specific concerning charges and work with the state to resolve them. It would not threaten to defer payments to all in-home supportive services for an entire quarter and then have the Vice President hold a celebratory press conference.
CMS continues to hold hostage funding to Minnesota, repeatedly making demands of that state with short deadlines only to move the goalposts when the state meets them.
And CMS sent a letter to New York making outlandish allegations about that state’s Medicaid program accompanied by bombastic social media posts from Dr. Oz claiming that “nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees” received personal care services. But Dr. Oz and CMS had to walk back those claims after it was pointed out that they had committed obvious errors in math that grossly inflated the number of enrollees receiving those services.
If Republicans are really interested in looking into waste, fraud and abuse, they should look no further than the actions of Trump and his Administration. It is outrageous to watch the Trump Administration going after state Medicaid programs while it has engaged in a reckless war of choice that is costing the American people $132 billion, tanking the economy, and fueling inflation that President Trump says he loves. Republicans also had no problem supporting a $1.8 billion slush fund to reward Trump’s friends and insurrectionists who assaulted police officers on January 6. That’s a waste of money.
The combination of the Republicans’ Big Ugly Bill and the politically motivated cuts by CMS puts states in an impossible situation. And patients are already paying the price.
Playing politics with Americans’ health care is cruel and dangerous. Unfortunately, that is what we are repeatedly seeing from Republicans here in Washington.
And with that I yield back the balance of my time.
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