The real fraud

It didn’t take long in the wake of last week’s primary election, to hear what is likely to be a primary attack line of Minnesota Republicans in the races for U.S. Senator and governor: fraud in the state’s Medicaid program.
No one denies that Medicaid fraud has been committed in Minnesota. It happens in every state, but that’s simply a fact, not an excuse.
The far more damaging fraud, however, is that Republicans, led by the Trump White House and the president’s allies in Congress and social media, have systematically and deliberately misrepresented the scale of the problem in Minnesota. They have spun a lie, not to fix a system that needed strengthening, but to justify punishing and discrediting a Democratic-run state for purely partisan purposes.
We’ve probably all heard of the $9 billion number tossed out in a reckless press conference by First Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson last December. It was a number that drew big headlines yet was backed by, well… absolutely nothing. Thompson, who was appointed by Trump, had pulled the number from thin air, without data, audits, or case files to back it up.
Minnesota’s own Department of Human Services said at the time it had evidence of tens of millions of dollars in fraud, not a billion. And nowhere near $9 billion.
But the $9 billion figure wasn’t a big enough exaggeration for the Trump White House. By this past February, Trump was telling the country — at the State of the Union, no less — that $19 billion had been “pillaged” from Minnesota taxpayers.
Local fact-checkers at the Star Tribune and other news organizations in the state have found no backing for either claim. A comprehensive Star Tribune tally of criminal fraud charges filed across all of Minnesota’s social service programs since September 2022 found a total of $217.7 million, the vast majority related to the now six-year-old Feeding Our Future case, which was about COVID funds, not Medicaid. About $25.65 million was tied specifically to Medicaid programs.
Since then, back in May, the Trump Justice Department made a big show when it filed the largest Medicaid fraud case in Minnesota history, charging 15 defendants with roughly $90 million in intended losses. Some of the charges, like so much of what the administrations takes to court, are dubious. Yet even if we assume the administration has evidence for the full $90 million, that’s still less than one-half of one percent of Trump’s $19 billion claim.
Here’s the reality: The numbers routinely cited by Trump, congressional Republicans, and right-wing influencers are nothing more than false political spin, meant to demean the state and the people of Minnesota and when Republican candidates repeat these falsehoods, it should be disqualifying. Nobody can defend campaigning for high office on outright lies.
The gap between Republican claims and reality matters because of what it’s been used to justify. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, at Trump’s direction, has threatened to withhold $2 billion in federal Medicaid funding from Minnesota annually and has already deferred $259 million, citing the administration’s grossly exaggerated fraud concerns. That’s money that provides care for more than a million Minnesotans, including seniors, disabled residents, and children. When GOP candidates in Minnesota continue to cite the administration’s false numbers, they are intentionally undermining the wellbeing of countless Minnesotans for political gain. It’s shameless.
The real story can be found in federal data, which shows that Minnesota performs far better than the national average when it comes to fraud in Medicaid programs. The state’s Medicaid improper-payment rate is 2.2 percent, well under the national average of roughly six percent. That’s not the profile of a uniquely corrupt system — it’s the profile of a state that is being targeted for partisan attacks.
Meanwhile, far bigger fraud cases in states that backed Donald Trump don’t result in a similar level of administration scrutiny, much less withholding of funds. As recently as June, the Justice Department filed a case in Florida targeting 455 defendants for over $6.5 billion in Medicare and Medicaid fraud. That’s 72 times larger than the case in Minnesota and it comes on top of cases involving over $14 billion in that state in 2025. It’s the same story in Texas, where Medicare and Medicaid fraud is vastly worse than here in Minnesota, even accounting for the differences in population. Has the administration suspended Medicaid payments to Florida or Texas? Of course not.
None of this excuses the real fraud that happened and ultimately misdirected funds intended to help vulnerable people. But let’s not pretend the GOP and its political allies are looking for real accountability, nor overlook the fact that they have invented claims they can’t substantiate to justify cutting off health care for over a million vulnerable Minnesotans. That’s a fraud with real consequences. Minnesotans shouldn’t stand for it.