A recent Wall Street Journal report exposed alarming waste in Medicaid, revealing the shocking scale of error in a welfare program that, in some cases, has issued simultaneous payments to up to five insurers for the same person, diverting taxpayer dollars to insurers while the neediest languish. This is just one symptom of a public welfare system — spanning Medicaid, food stamps (the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and beyond — that is riddled with fraud, waste, and abuse and demands urgent reform. Improper payments in these programs cost tens of billions of dollars annually. These aren’t mere errors. States are profiting from them.
As a former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services and Medicaid director in two states during the 2000s and early 2010s, I saw this firsthand. My teams uncovered recipients who were enrolled in multiple states because of absent data-sharing. We urged HHS and the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) to create a national database, but our pleas were ignored. Medicaid and SNAP are lifelines for millions, yet their inefficiencies siphon resources from the vulnerable.
