Tag: health care

Obamacare Fraud Estimated To Cost $25 Billion This Year: Report

Taxpayers will foot the bill for up to $25 billion in improper Obamacare payments due to organized fraud and improper enrollments in 2026, according to a June 3 report from Paragon Health Institute.

Some 6.2 million enrollments in the healthcare exchanges during the most recent open-enrollment period were improper, the report said, accounting for 27 percent of all enrollments.

The conservative think tank has studied fraud in the Obamacare program since 2024.

The problem of improper enrollments persists despite recent attempts to curtail it, and appears to involve organized efforts by unscrupulous insurance brokers, the report concluded.

Meanwhile, some industry groups have criticized the findings.

Incentives For Fraud

Obamacare’s premium subsidies, which cover 100 percent of the health coverage policy for many beneficiaries, and referral bonuses offer an incentive for both enrollees and brokers to abuse the system, the report concluded.

Researchers identified improper enrollments by comparing Obamacare data to Census Bureau population estimates. The improper enrollments were calculated by a state-by-state comparison of enrollments in the lowest income category to the number of people having that income level in the state.

The lowest income category is 100 percent to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $16,000 to $24,000 per year for an individual or about $27,000 to $41,000 for a family of three.

Enrollees with incomes at that level receive the highest subsidies. During the 2026 open enrollment period, 29 percent of enrollees chose a plan with a $0 premium.

That gives enrollees and the agents who sign people up for Obamacare an incentive to misstate their income, the report concluded.

The American Hospital Association has said Paragon’s research results are not valid due to flawed methodology. “The Census uses different income and household size definitions than the Marketplace so there is no possibility of the data matching,” the group said in an August 2025 statement. The association also said the Census relies on reported income but Obamacare asks for projected income.

The total value of Obamacare subsidies to be paid in 2026 is $88 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Agents who enroll individuals or families in Obamacare earn a commission averaging around $20 per enrollee per month for as long as the policy is active.

Obamacare received more than 23 million enrollments during the 2026 open enrollment period.

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Kash Patel Unveils FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudsters” List as Officials Announce New Medicaid Fraud Indictments

FBI Director Kash Patel announced on Wednesday that the FBI is launching a “Most Wanted Fraudsters” list as the Department of Justice investigates criminal fraud rings across the country.

Patel credited Vice President JD Vance, the chairman of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, for the idea. “Mr. Vice President, thanks to your vision, we’re here to deliver, and you see it here today,” he said.

“I want all Americans to take a look at these most wanted individuals and look at the amounts, the 10s of millions and billions of dollars in fraud that they have decimated our societies from,” Patel continued, urging Americans to provide tips on the fraudsters’ whereabouts.

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Spanish Gov. Consoles Native-Born Locals — Migrants Are ‘Healthier’ Than You

Migrants have “better health” than Spaniards and thus use fewer public healthcare resources than the native-born population, Spain’s socialist government claims through a study published by its own health ministry

According to Spanish Health Minister Mónica García, the study states that migrants in Spain make fewer use of the nation’s healthcare system, medications, and have a lower prevalence of chronic diseases than the native-born population — who are attributed by the document of using a more “intensive” use of their own country’s healthcare resources.

The study, titled, “Health Status and Use of the Healthcare System Among the Migrant Population in Spain” was presented by García on Monday. According to the La Moncloa presidential palace, the document contains a study that analyses the “health reality” of foreign-born individuals in Spain. Furthermore, the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez claimed that the study “confirms” the “Healthy Immigrant Effect” theory, which states that migrants have a health advantage over native-born individuals.

García, in remarks during the report’s presentation, claimed that the study makes the prevailing narrative surrounding migration and its pressure on the nation’s healthcare system “not hold up.”

In a post sharing her own remarks on social media, García claimed “We dismantle the narrative of hate with data” and that “universality is not only fairer, it also saves money for the healthcare system.”

“The migrant population uses the healthcare system less than the native-born population,” García affirmed on Monday. “Native-born individuals make greater use of the system at virtually every level of care: in primary care, they have more visits, undergo more procedures, consume more medications, and have a higher prevalence of chronic diseases.”

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Dr. Oz Says CMS Has Identified at Least $2 BILLION in Healthcare Benefits That Were Stolen by Illegals – DOUBLE What Was Found Last Year

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz revealed on Tuesday that his agency has identified now $2 billion in fraudulent healthcare payments that have been given to illegal aliens.

“The number has doubled from what I said last year. We’re about $2 billion,” he told The Gateway Pundit during a White House press briefing, adding that some states are cracking down on the fraud.

“The good news is that many states realize this is a problem, and they themselves have stopped doing this.”

“Some states don’t do as good a job as other states. That’s why we’re looking to individual states for leadership, for better ideas, to deal with many of these social problems that unfortunately begin to pile up over time. And they threaten the very foundation of our social net that supports all of us,” he added.

Oz further touted Vice President JD Vance’s work in exposing the fraud for criminal referral with his White House anti-fraud task force. While speaking at an anti-fraud roundtable with state attorneys general and White House officials last month, Vance revealed staggering numbers his team had discovered, including over $22 billion in fraudulent small business loans, more than $1.3 billion in fraudulent Medicaid reimbursements, $6.3 billion in suspected fraudulent government contracts, and $60 million in student aid fraud.

“He’s taking this seriously. He’s going at it and he’s doing what’s best for the American people by making some tough decisions,” Oz said of Vance.

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Largest Human Cancer Study of Ivermectin + Mebendazole Is Now PEER-REVIEWED and PUBLISHED in a Major Cancer Journal

The largest real-world human study to date evaluating ivermectin and mebendazole in cancer patients is now peer-reviewed and published in Anticancer Research—a major international oncology journal of the International Institute of Anticancer Research (IIAR), established in 1995.

Our study, “Real-world Clinical Outcomes of Ivermectin and Mebendazole in Cancer Patients: Results from a Prospective Observational Cohort,” represents one of the most compelling clinical signals ever documented for repurposed anti-parasitic therapies in oncology.

In this prospective real-world clinical program evaluation, a diverse population of cancer patients (n=197) was prescribed compounded ivermectin–mebendazole, with each capsule containing 25 mg ivermectin and 250 mg mebendazole. Participants were followed for approximately six months using standardized digital surveys assessing cancer outcomes, medication adherence, and tolerability.

At approximately six months post-treatment initiation, we observed an 84.4% Clinical Benefit Ratio (CBR)—meaning more than four out of five patients reported either no evidence of disease (remission), tumor regression, or cancer stabilization.

Nearly half of all patients (48.4%) reported the strongest positive outcomes, including no evidence of disease (32.8%) or tumor regression (15.6%). An additional 36.1% reported disease stabilization, while only 15.6% reported progression.

Importantly, adherence was remarkably high, with 86.9% completing the initial prescription and 66.4% remaining on therapy at six months.

Side effects were predominantly mild and manageable, reported in 25.4% of patients (primarily gastrointestinal), with 93.6% of those experiencing side effects continuing treatment after minor dosing adjustments.

What makes these findings especially notable is that this was a heterogeneous, real-world cancer population—including patients with prostate, breast, lung, colon, liver, and many other malignancies, many of whom were also undergoing conventional therapies such as chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery.

This groundbreaking peer-reviewed publication was made possible through a unique collaboration between The Wellness Company, the McCullough Foundation, and the Chairman of the President’s Cancer Panel—uniting real-world clinical data, frontline medical experience, and epidemiologic expertise to evaluate inexpensive, repurposed therapies with major translational potential.

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Massachusetts Sues UnitedHealthcare Over Alleged $100 Million Fraud

Massachusetts sued UnitedHealthcare on May 29, alleging the company defrauded the state’s Medicaid program by making seniors appear sicker than they were to secure higher payments.

The company contracted with MassHealth to provide a Senior Care Options—which combines Medicare and Medicaid benefits into one plan—for seniors aged 65 and older.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly received more than $100 million in fraudulent payments from MassHealth between 2015 and 2025, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell stated in the complaint.

UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, said the complaint is “meritless and doesn’t accurately describe our Senior Care Options program” in ‌a statement emailed to The Epoch Times.

The legal complaint alleged UnitedHealthcare inflated payment rates in three ways.

Upcoding

Massachusetts paid UnitedHealthcare a per-member, per-month rate for each senior enrolled in the plan based on UnitedHealthcare’s assessments of the member’s health conditions.

UnitedHealthcare allegedly labeled members as having behavioral health disorders such as depression or anxiety, or substance use disorders to gain higher reimbursement rates, according to the complaint, when the members had no diagnosis or treatment on record for such conditions.

An analysis by the attorney general’s office revealed that nearly 30 percent of UnitedHealthcare’s 2014 through 2024 behavioral health assessments lacked any matching medical claims to support the mental health diagnoses reported to the state.

Keeping Overpayments

The insurer’s internal reviews identified that many members were incorrectly placed in the highest and most expensive level of care despite not qualifying for it, according to the lawsuit.

While the company eventually downgraded these members to lower-paying levels, it allegedly failed to inform the state of the prior errors or return the extra money it had already collected.

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The Crisis Creators – Why Behavioral Health Makes Everything Worse

If anyone hasn’t figured out yet where too much of America’s health problems begin, look no further than the behavioral health industry. It’s time to take a serious look.

While the federal government is in an all-out offensive to uncover fraud in State Medicaid programs, the real fraud lies in the psychiatric diagnosing that has gone unchecked for a hundred years and brought the nation to a mental health crisis.

Just this month alone, the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has begun a national campaign to reduce the use of psychiatric drugs by publishing “deprescribing” guidance and training for doctors for any number of the tens of millions of Americans who are taking Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) commonly referred to as antidepressants.

Here’s the truth. The modern mental health model of diagnosis and drug treatment is an enormous failure. People have been harmed for years using antidepressants, and go figure, the medical community admits it’s hard to get off prescription mind-altering drugs. The goal of the HHS Secretary is to finally make drugs one of many options for “treatment” of mental illnesses. But is that enough? Is that really the answer to over-prescribing?

It’s a fact. Americans can’t get the drugs without a mental disorder diagnosis, and the diagnoses are not based on science. In other words, there isn’t anything broken in anyone’s brain that can be medically measured…no X-ray, CAT Scan, blood or urine test can identify any of the alleged mental disorders. And, the fact is, if an abnormality was discovered in the brain, most likely a neurologist would be utilized…not a psychiatrist. Neurologists study brain disease, and psychiatrists study behavior. A very big difference that has been ignored in the modern mental health model.

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Iowa Passes School Screen Time Limits Law

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds signed House File 2676, known as the MAHA ( Make American Healthy Again) bill, on May 20, 2026. HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. attended the signing.

The bill includes a large health-policy package, but possibly the most notable reform is the elementary school screen time limit which limits screen time during the school day for elementary school students. As part of the reform, the bill requires that schools limit daily device exposure for young students, increases required physical activity during the school day, and implements healthier school lunch standards.

Other reforms in the bill include restrictions on SNAP eligible foods, removal of certain food dyes from school meals, permission for over-the-counter ivermectin, and nutrition education requirements for medical professionals.

The screen time limit is the most unique reform as research is now showing that excessive screen time negatively effects the intellectual, physical and social development of children. The bill requires that schools rebalance time toward more physical movement and in-person engagement.

The law requires a cap of 60 minutes a day of screen time/digital instruction for K-5 students with exceptions for special education needs/individualized programs. It also balances this with the requirement minimum of two hours of physical activity per week. This is a statewide, uniform statute which will require every public school to adjust curricula, schedules, and teaching activities.

Other states have passed laws to limit cell phone usage in schools, but none have put a limit on instructional technology usage other than restrictions of which programs and social media may be used while in school.

Iowa ties the law to physical health, fitness, and chronic‑disease prevention, alongside fitness tests and activity requirements while other state laws frame bans strictly on distraction, bullying, or mental‑health issues. Iowa’s ban also specifies “instructional screen time,” not just usage of technology in school.

Implementation of the law needs to be planned and provided to schools. It is not clear about the definition of digital instruction nor does it provide steps for monitoring technology minutes in schools.

It is also possible that there could legal challenges to the law from those promoting local control or from commercial vendors who currently provide technology in the schools.

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Medicare Fraud, Kickbacks Rampant at 340B Hospitals

When Vice President J.D. Vance and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson launched the White House Fraud Task Force earlier this year, they promised that the federal government would stop being a piggy bank for grifters and start being a steward of the taxpayer’s dollar. They’re off to a great start, freezing billions in suspect payments, exposing operators that billed Medicare for patients who don’t exist, and putting all 50 states on notice.

But one of the most brazen scams in American health care is still sitting in plain sight. The 340B Drug Discount Program, on track to become the largest government drug program in the country, was created to help low-income patients. All too often it instead helps multibillion dollar “non-profit” hospitals to fund ad campaigns, pad executive pay, and push out independent competitors.

One angle of this 340B scandal has gone unreported: many of these same hospitals have been cited by the Department of Justice for Medicare and Medicaid fraud. This trend warrants a closer look from Vance and Ferguson.

A review of Justice Department recent settlements identifies 340B-registered hospital systems that have agreed to pay tens—even hundreds of millions—of dollars to settle allegations of Medicare or Medicaid fraud. Across a subset of particularly egregious cases, aggregated settlements collectively exceed half a billion dollars. Cases range from physician kickbacks and billing services never rendered, to manipulating Medicaid matching funds and charging for medically unnecessary procedures.

CHRISTUS St. Vincent, the same Santa Fe hospital documented for its anti-competitive campaign against Nexus Health, paid $12.24 million in 2017 to settle Medicaid False Claims Act allegations after manipulating county donations to inflate federal matching funds. It separately settled a second case for billing services a physician never performed.

Bon Secours St. Francis Health System paid $36.5 million to resolve kickback allegations tied to physician referral volume. A Virginia lawsuit separately alleged Bon Secours credentialed an OB/GYN later convicted of fraud for performing bogus procedures. A 2022 New York Times investigation found the system extracting profit from a low-income Richmond neighborhood while directing resources elsewhere.

Indianapolis-based Community Health Network (CHN) paid $345 million in 2023 to settle False Claims Act allegations that it systematically violated the Stark Law by overpaying recruited specialists to capture their downstream Medicare referrals. The government alleged that CHN knowingly exceeded fair market value in physician compensation to capture downstream Medicare referrals, then awarded bonuses directly tied to referral volume.

These cases are not representative of every 340B hospital. Many covered entities use the program exactly as Congress intended. But the bad actors are unfortunately common. They are large, well-resourced systems that have claimed the program’s benefits while defrauding the federal programs it was designed to complement.

And because 340B has no mechanism to distinguish between good actors and bad, the entire program pays the price. A fraud settlement triggers no automatic review of a hospital’s eligibility. There is no coordination between the Justice Department, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) that would prompt a second look. Hospitals can defraud Medicare and Medicaid, pay hundreds of millions to resolve those allegations, and continue receiving 340B benefits without interruption. This is the type of coordination challenge that the White House Fraud Task Force can help to solve.

The Trump administration has already gotten the ball rolling. In July 2025, HRSA launched a pilot program to test a rebate model that would require hospitals to submit data on how 340B drugs are dispensed before receiving reimbursement, building in a layer of accountability the program has never had. Hospital lobbying groups sued to block it, and a federal court issued an injunction in December 2025. HRSA has since restarted the effort, issuing a new request for information in February 2026.

The 340B program was built on a simple premise: give hospitals a financial advantage and they will use it to care for patients who have nowhere else to turn. For many, that is exactly what happens. But for others, the program has functioned as an open tab: no strings attached, no mechanism to screen out institutions with documented records of federal fraud.

As Vance and Ferguson turn the spotlight on fraud and scams across the healthcare system, 340B hospitals with a track record of bad behavior should be in their sights.

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Blue States Starting to Curb ‘Free’ Healthcare to Migrants as Budgets Spin Out of Control

A host of deep blue states are quietly pulling back from their generous programs of “free” healthcare to migrants as federal dollars dry up and their budgets continue to spiral into the red.

With the Trump administration beginning to close the spigot of billions in federal aid that many states lavishly spent caring for illegal migrants, sates including California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Oregon Washington, and the District of Columbia are finding that they cannot afford to replace the chocked off federal dollars with their own state budget dollars. This reality setting in has caused state officials to begin scaling back their freebies to illegals, which all come at the expense of American citizens.

According to the Washington Examiner, 14 states have had been devoting untold millions to migrants, for their children, and for pregnant, non-citizen women.

But after President Donald Trump signed his “Big Beautiful” spending bill, cutting billions in federal aid with cuts to Medicaid, CHIP, Medicare, and Obamacare insurance subsidies, many states have been forced to make decisions about their migrant programs.

The cutbacks also reflect the Democrats’ difficulty in funding their hugely expensive urban political machines. Those “Sanctuary City Ponzi scheme” political machines need poor migrants to help conduit federal funds back to local city and state politicians, partly because many productive Americans move away to low-migration cities and states that have lower taxes, less diversity, better schools, higher wages, and cheaper housing.

Thus far, California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and Washington the District of Columbia have already begun cutting free migrant healthcare budgets. And several others are in the process of evaluating similar measures.

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