Vice President JD Vance announced new efforts by the Trump administration to eliminate fraud schemes on Wednesday, alerting states that refuse to cooperate with the federal government that they will risk losing access to federal funds for “Medicaid Fraud Control Units” and, possibly, additional programs.
Vance, who leads President Donald Trump‘s anti-fraud task force, held a press conference at the White House to announce the initiative. The vice president joked about hosting the event while Trump was abroad on a state visit to China.
“On days like today, I sometimes feel like Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone,” the vice president joked at the top of his remarks. “I walk in the White House, and it’s very quiet, and no one’s there. It takes me a second to realize exactly what’s going on.”
Vance proceeded to outline that the administration has identified healthcare fraud schemes across virtually all 50 states but accused some, “mostly blue states,” of not taking “Medicaid fraud seriously.”
The vice president specifically noted that some Democratic-led states, such as Maryland, have embraced the federal government’s anti-fraud initiatives, but that others, most notably California, Hawaii, and New York, are not using federal anti-fraud resources at all.
Vance said that the first step in addressing that dynamic would come later on Wednesday, in the form of letters sent to every state Medicare program pressuring them to start targeting fraud schemes, or they will lose access to MCFU funding. Furthermore, he stated that the federal government would consider turning off additional federal funding in future over additional resistance to cooperation on the issue.
“Our goal here is not to do that. We don’t want to turn off any money. What we want to do is ensure that people are taking fraud seriously. We want to protect Medicaid. We want to protect Medicare, but we can’t do that if the states that are administering those programs are allowing those programs to be fleeced by fraudsters,” he reiterated. “So we encourage — whether it’s California in New York or Maryland or Ohio — we encourage people to work with us. We want to help you use technology and other tools to get rid of the fraud, to get to the root of the fraud.”
“We want to help you, but we can only help these state programs if those state programs are willing to help themselves,” Vance closed. “So, these letters are the first step, the first effort to try to force these states to get serious about prosecuting fraud.”
VANCE SELLS IRAN WAR TO THE HEARTLAND AS RUBIO CHARMS WASHINGTON
You can watch Vance’s comments in full below.