Medicaid Fraud and its defenders

Calls for transparency of New York’s runaway $115B Medicaid ‘gravy train’ grow in light of Minnesota fraud

After billions in Medicaid money was stolen by fraudsters in Minnesota, all eyes are on New York — where spending on health programs is set to top $115 billion in 2026.

Although New York spends more on Medicaid than Florida and Texas — both with much higher populations — there is no public oversight of where all the money goes.

This has prompted calls for a statewide audit, which Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul has resisted.

“This is not hard to figure out. When there’s this much money, it’s going into somebody’s pockets,” New York State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, who has sent unanswered letters to Hochul demanding an audit, told The Post.

“There are people who do not want that information out there, or the audit done. It will lead to people losing money, right? The gravy train might end. It might even lead to prosecutions.

[“Might”?]

Unlike Minnesota, which publishes a database of every Medicaid check written, New York keeps its numbers shrouded in secrecy.

Minnesota was moved to transparency after receiving a D+ grade for government accountability and transparency from the Center for Public Integrity in 2012.

Since 2015, state run TransparencyMN has published details of every Medicaid dollar going to vendors. In a few clicks lawmakers, journalists, and everyday citizens can see publicly how much of their money is going to anyone receiving Medicaid reimbursements, from doctors and hospitals to daycares and transportation services.

That’s one way local activists, reporters, and YouTube personalities have been able to expose alleged widespread fraud in Minneapolis’s Somali community.

New York has no such tool to see where $115 billion — the projected Medicaid spend for 2026 according to the State Comptroller’s Office — of taxpayers’ money goes.

“What’s happening with Medicaid fraud in New York State makes what happened in Minnesota look like child’s play,” state senator George Borrello, who represents the 57th district bordering Buffalo and has joined the campaign for an audit, told The Post.

“The fraud in Medicaid in New York State is so massive, it dwarfs anything we’re seeing anywhere else in the country,” he claimed.

Prosecutions are rare but often staggering, such as that of Zakia Khan, convicted last year of conspiring to defraud Medicaid of approximately $68 million through the payment of kickbacks and bribes.

“There’s a lot of people over the years who don’t want these resources available because, let’s be honest, there’s people who are knowingly abusing this system and are benefiting from it. Period. End of story,” he added.

New York has proved user-friendly transparency is possible. The state has a nearly identical tool as Minnesota for tracking state payments — Open Book New York — but Medicaid payments are conspicuously absent.

The Department of Health, which oversees Medicaid, refuses to provide any figures, citing privacy concerns. This leaves taxpayers and watchdog groups only able to access the information, which is compiled by the state and they have a legal right to, if they jump through complex legal hoops.

The governor’s office did not address issues of transparency to The Post, but said the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General claimed “more than $4.5 billion in cost savings and recoveries” in 2024.

That’s what the Department of Health says — the Medicaid Inspector General has a different take: