As some Republican leaders are pushing allegations that Medicaid recipients and their families are defrauding Medicaid, a new poll indicates that most Americans believe they’re far from the main culprit. Most respondents also said they thought the overall Medicaid-fraud push was just politics.
In addition, the poll indicated that when it comes to defrauding the government, Medicaid wasn’t respondent’s top concern — it was taxes.
The poll, by the nonpartisan health-research organization KFF, was published July 16. The combination online/phone poll was conducted between June 25 and 30 among a nationally representative sample of 1,321 U.S. adults.
It comes after President Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” last year cut almost$1 trillion from Medicaid over 10 years while giving massive tax cuts to the richest Americans. Congressional Republicans also allowed subsidies to buy health coverage on Affordable Care Act exchanges to expire.
Since then, Ohio has seen the steepest drop in coverage purchased on the exchanges. Almost a third, or 161,000, have dropped coverage as their premiums doubled.
Amid an overall affordability crisis, Americans’ are still most worried about healthcare, the KFF poll found. Sixty-two percent said they were very or somewhat worried about affording healthcare, while 38% were not too worried or not worried at all.
Healthcare was followed by gas prices, then housing costs, then food expenses and then utilities in respondents’ affordability concerns.
As the public and Medicaid administrators brace for the brunt of Medicaid cuts to take effect Jan. 1, the Trump administration and Ohio officials have been 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 to decry alleged Medicaid fraud — particularly home health programs it funds. But the dollar figures they threw out also included allegations of undelivered behavioral-health services and alleged fraud in federal programs unrelated to Medicaid.
The KFF poll said the administration has also been playing up Medicaid fraud in other states. It said a big majority of respondents think it’s not a genuine anti-fraud effort, merely election-year politics.
“The Trump administration has recently deferred federal Medicaid payments in a few states with claims that these actions will save money and root out fraud,” it said. “But voters are skeptical: fewer than half say these deferrals are ‘very’ or ‘somewhat likely’ to save taxpayers money (43%) or that it is likely to lower health care costs for people like them (31%). However, most voters — including majorities across partisans — say the deferrals are likely to cause eligible low-income people to lose access to care they rely on. About two-thirds of voters (65%) believe this approach is mostly motivated by politics, though most Republican voters say it is mostly motivated by a genuine effort to reduce fraud and protect Medicaid (69%).”
When it comes to fraud, respondents placed other suspects higher on their list.
A whopping 92% said the federal tax system was subject to a lot or some fraud. That was followed by defense contracting (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 in terms of Medicaid fraud — that recipients and their families are bilking the system.
Keith Faber is Ohio auditor and the Republican nominee for state attorney general. On a May 5 appearance on Cincinnati’s WLW radio, Faber said that family members paid by Ohio Medicaid are bilking a program to provide home care.
“The problem is that it’s very difficult to catch the abuse because grandma’s never going to rat out granddaughter or daughter who’s supposed to be taking care of her, but she’s sitting there playing on her cell phone all day,” Faber said at the 1:16:18 mark of the “Sunday Nights With Bill Cunningham” show. “So that’s the problem you get into and, candidly, why the legislature probably needs to get out of that waiver and get back to the… eliminate these programs.”
In other words, Faber was accusing an elderly Ohioan of being complicit as family members denied her care that taxpayers were financing. When Faber’s campaign was asked for a documented example of that happening, it didn’t provide one.
Respondents to the KFF poll didn’t think such alleged scams were much of a problem.
Just 13% thought that Medicaid or Medicare fraud was carried out by individual patients. Another 53% said it was carried out by providers, including doctors’ offices and hospital systems. The remainder were unsure.