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Comment by germinalphrase | Hacker News Reader

This $9B figure is not a serious number; it’s a narrative. The concrete allegations released so far peg the criminal impact closer to $250 million which, let’s be honest, is bad enough.

As a Minnesotan, I’m appalled by the scale of these thefts, but glad they are actively investigating and charging these people for their crimes. If we had an honest and right minded political/justice system, we would be seeking to uncover and prosecute fraud through the nation.

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It says right in the first para, "could be" $9B. They obviously have no real idea. It sounds like the audit turned up a large amount of spending that can't be positively accounted for. Similar to the multiple trillions missing in all recent DoD audits. We really don't know how much has truly been "stolen" versus just not being properly recorded.

I know so many honest citizens who could have benefitted from a tiny fraction of that money.

But it's been under investigation for 4.5 years as I understand, and the theoretical numbers thrown by politicians (hype/lies) are increasingly confusing. So what's the hope for any correction?

I don’t hear many people in Minnesota trying to pretend the existence of these crimes is a hoax, fake news, etc. - so the hope is that we take our prosecutorial responsibilities seriously. Perhaps, so seriously that we set an expectation for the investigation and criminal prosecution of fraud and corruption vertically as well.

It’s not like multi-billion Medicare / Medicaid fraud is unheard of. What makes you certain it’s not a serious number?

To my understanding, the total spending is around $18B, so the allegation that 50% of all spending is fraudulent requires quite the sniff test. Additionally, large multi-billion dollar fraud causes are usually associated with large organizations (like a hospital or insurance system) which is not the case here.

Could it be $9B+? Stick enough vague qualifying words around your presentation of the probable truth then yea, sure - at least $9B in spending could be fraudulent.

It’s not 50% of all Medicaid spending. Minnesota spends about 18B a year (federal + state) on Medicaid). This is an alleged 9b of fraud over 7 years in specific services, so about a billion a year. An organization Minnesota knew was likely fraudulent at the time was still able to steal 250m in a year during COVID so a billion a year doesn’t seem too far fetched.

That would make it a more compelling argument, yes. However, the known ~$250M fraud was stolen over several years (rather than a single year’s take), so it’s not clear what could account for the remaining $8.75B.

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