A new report finds New York State is being wrongfully accused of Medicaid fraud.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz sent a letter to state officials accusing them of running a fraud-ridden Medicaid program. It also claims a little more than 5 million New Yorkers on Medicaid received home care in the first part of 2025.

Michael Kinnucan, health policy director for the Fiscal Policy Institute, said this stems from a basic math error by federal officials.

"After reviewing the numbers and puzzling on it a bit," he said, "I realized what they were actually doing [was] adding up the monthly unique users in the program to get an annual total."

If there were 100,000 users in March, April and May, he said, then they interpreted the data at 300,000 total users in three months. Kinnucan said he feels the misreading of the data should have been obvious since New York has only around 7 million Medicaid enrollees total, most of whom are non-disabled adults and kids with no need for home care.

Mostly blue states received letters from CMS about their Medicaid systems being rife with fraud. However, given the misreading of New York’s data, Kinnucan said he wonders just how serious the administration's and CMS’s claims about Medicaid fraud are.

"We know what helps to address fraud, which is collaborative partnership between the state and the federal government, and good data, well-analyzed," he said. "The fact that there’s this adversarial relationship and bad data happening in the federal alleged anti-fraud campaign really raises questions about what they’re trying to do."

Other states such as Maine and California responded sharply to the letters, noting the federal claims are grossly exaggerated. However, with a second budget reconciliation bill in the works, some advocates worry this attitude will be reflected in federal Medicaid spending.

Source: Public News Service