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WASHINGTON — Four state Medicaid bosses have agreed to appear before a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee hearing on benefit fraud next week, The Post has learned.
The Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations invited New York State Medicaid Director Amir Bassiri to the June 25 hearing, along with Tyler Sadwith of California, John Connolly of Minnesota and Scott Partika of Ohio.
“Fraud puts the Medicaid program at risk, harming beneficiaries and reducing access to quality health care for the most vulnerable Americans,” Reps. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and John Joyce (R-Pa.) said in a statement.
“States have a duty to be responsible stewards of public resources, but a lack of stringent guardrails at the state level has left Medicaid programs highly susceptible to fraud,” they added.
“The Committee is conducting meaningful oversight to address fraud and moving forward with the next phase of our oversight work to eradicate systemic fraud and fortify Medicaid program integrity nationwide.”
The announcement comes as the Trump administration aggressively cracks down on fraudsters who bilk taxpayer-funded entitlement programs.
The Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against New York on Tuesday alleging officials in Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration engaged in a “sham bid process” to let a handpicked company operate the Empire State’s $11 billion Medicaid home health care program.
“New York’s failure to police a favored vendor that unlawfully siphoned millions of dollars of Medicaid funding is egregious and betrays the public trust,” said Brett A. Shumate, assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s Civil Division, in a statement.
Bassiri is named as a defendant in the suit as “part of an effort to disqualify other qualified bidders,” which the feds claim involved “pressure from our Governor’s Office.”
New York shelled out $115.6 billion on Medicaid for around 7 million people in fiscal year 2025.
The program “has continued to grow at unsustainable levels,” per Hochul’s budget plan for this fiscal year.
The Trump administration’s anti-fraud task force has also announced investigations, prosecutions and convictions of dozens of scammers in New York, California, Minnesota and Ohio.
On June 4, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and FBI Director Kash Patel revealed a $30 million scheme in Columbus, Ohio, to defraud behavioral health services for children. That money had instead been used to buy luxury cars.
Task force leaders — including Vice President JD Vance — have also announced the revocation of hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for Medicaid programs in Minnesota and California.
Federal prosecutors have suggested that the amount looted from Medicaid and other taxpayer programs in Minnesota since 2018 could top $9 billion.
Some White House officials, like deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, have claimed that the money recouped from fraudsters could help balance the federal budget.
Provisions in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act will also reduce state-directed Medicaid spending by $911 billion over the next decade, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.
Guthrie’s panel began investigating Minnesota’s fraud in January, but expanded its inquiry in March to 10 other states, citing several of the recent busts.
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