A patient has his blood drawn during a free HIV test with a medical assistant in Miami. A giant tax and spending bill pending in the U.S. Senate would prohibit abortion clinics — which typically provide testing sites for sexually transmitted infections — from accepting Medicaid. (Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images)
As some Republican leaders make allegations that Medicaid beneficiaries and their families are defrauding Medicaid, a modern poll shows that a majority of Americans believe they are not the main culprit. Most respondents also said they believe the general push for Medicaid fraud is just politics.
Additionally, the survey found that when it came to defrauding the government, Medicaid was not the respondent’s top concern – taxes were.
Questionnaireby the non-partisan research organization KFF, published on July 16. The online and telephone poll was conducted June 25-30 among a nationally representative sample of 1,321 U.S. adults.
This followed President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Act” last year. cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid for over 10 years while providing massive tax cuts to the wealthiest Americans. Republicans in Congress also allowed subsidies for purchasing health insurance through the exchanges under the Affordable Care Act to expire.
Since then, Ohio has seen the biggest drop in range bought on stock exchanges. Nearly a third, or 161,000 people, dropped insurance as premiums doubled.
Amid an overall affordability crisis, Americans are still most concerned about health care, according to a KFF survey. Sixty-two percent said they were very or somewhat worried about the availability of health care, while 38% were not very or not worried at all.
Respondents’ concerns about affordability were followed by gas prices, followed by housing costs, then food costs, and then utilities.
As the public and Medicaid administrators prepare for major Medicaid cuts to go into effect on Jan. 1, the Trump administration and Ohio officials are highlighting what they say is rampant fraud in the system.
In early June, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and other administration officials gathered on a stage in Whitehall with Ohio Republicans condemn alleged Medicaid fraud – in particular the home health programs it funds. But the dollar amounts they provided also included allegations of failure to provide behavioral health services and alleged fraud in federal programs unrelated to Medicaid.
The KFF poll found that the administration also played a role in Medicaid fraud in other states. It found that the immense majority of respondents believed that these were not real anti-fraud measures, but merely election-year politics.
“The Trump administration recently deferred federal Medicaid payments in several states, saying the actions would save money and root out fraud,” it said. “Yet voters are skeptical: Less than half say these deferrals are “very” or “somewhat” likely to save taxpayers money (43%) or that they are likely to lower health care costs for people like them (31%). But a majority of voters — including a majority of all supporters — say the deferrals will likely cause eligible low-income people to lose access to the care they rely on. About two-thirds of voters (65%) believe this approach is mainly motivated by politics, although a majority of GOP voters say it is mainly motivated by real efforts to reduce fraud and protect Medicaid (69%).
When it comes to fraud, respondents placed other suspects higher on their list.
A full 92% said the federal tax system was subject to some or much fraud. This was followed by defense contracts (87%), foreign aid (79%), Medicaid (78%), Medicare (75%), Social Security (72%), and ACA marketplaces (70%).
Respondents also don’t appear to be buying what some Republican officials are selling about Medicaid fraud – that beneficiaries and their families are gaming the system.
Keith Faber is an Ohio state auditor and the Republican Party’s candidate for state attorney general. On May 5 on WLW radio in Cincinnati, Faber said that family members paid by Ohio Medicaid fund the home care program.
“The problem is that it’s very difficult to catch abuse because the grandmother will never hand over her granddaughter or daughter who should be taking care of her, and she sits all day and plays with her cell phone,” Faber said at 1:16:18.Sunday Nights with Bill Cunningham.”. “So that’s the problem and, frankly, why the Legislature will probably have to roll back this waiver and go back to … eliminating these programs.”
In other words, Faber accused the elderly Ohioan of complicity in having her family members deny her taxpayer-funded care. When the Faber campaign asked for a documented example of such an event, none was provided.
Respondents to the KFF survey did not believe that this type of alleged fraud was a huge problem.
Just 13% believed that Medicaid or Medicare fraud was committed by individual patients. Another 53% said it was done by providers, including doctors’ offices and hospital systems. The others weren’t sure.
