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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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