Cracking Down on Medicaid Fraud: Congressman Kennedy’s Plan to Save Billions

Congressman Mike Kennedy from Utah’s 3rd Congressional District discusses his proposed legislation, the Medicaid Integrity and Save Taxpayer Act. The bill aims to reduce federal Medicaid spending by requiring states to verify the eligibility of Medicaid recipients every three months. Kennedy highlights concerns over states like California and New York allegedly enrolling undocumented immigrants in Medicaid without proper verification. He argues that regular eligibility checks are common sense and could save taxpayers an estimated $280 billion. Kennedy emphasizes that Medicaid was originally designed for vulnerable populations such as pregnant women, the disabled, and those in poverty—not to provide healthcare universally.

Transcript:

Chuck Warren: With Congressman Mike Kennedy, Utah's third congressional district. Congressman, as you know, Medicaid accounts for 57 percent of all federal expenditures. It's a big problem. You are the background to go help solve the problem that there needs to be solving to it. And you have introduced a bill called the Medicaid Integrity and Save Taxpayer Adult. What is that?

What is that bill and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Congressman Mike Kennedy: What's been shocking for us is that the states of California and New York have registered hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens on Medicaid, and they don't confirm any verification on this. So what my bill merely does, and we're seeing some of this mirrored in reconciliation, is require states that have people on Medicaid to verify the eligibility every

three months, which sounds like common sense. And actually, that's what President Trump is working on, a golden age of common sense for the United States of America is if people are on Medicaid, they should be able to prove their verification eligibility every three months at least. And so by requiring that,

we can save $280 billion because there are hundreds of thousands of illegal aliens on Medicaid right now. And the states that have registered these people know that they are registering illegal aliens on federal taxpayer programs like Medicaid. And for your listeners, Medicaid was created for pregnant women, disabled individuals, and people that are in poverty.

It was not created to generate health care for all the people of the world. We can't do that. God bless the people of the world. We want to do our best. The United States is a charitable people. But it is not our job to health care, clothe, and feed every person on the planet. We can't do it.

So in this case, all our bill does is it requires Medicaid verification every three months, and with that, we'll save billions of dollars. So I'm proud of that bill, and we're going to see a version of that in reconciliation. I entirely support the effort that we're moving forward on on this important concept.

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