Minnesota officials have been working to fix fraud after a major scandal was exposed.
The new verification layer will be added to high-risk Medicaid programs.
According to the federal government, Minnesota taxpayers lost $9 billion due to fraud between 2018 and 2019.
Jonathan Gilliam, a former FBI agent, has downplayed the likelihood that these fixes would actually work.
He told Fox News: “Adding an extra layer will not help…And one is not gonna stop anything, it may stop a part of the fraud but it won’t make a difference overall.”
Minnesota officials have added an extra layer to verify payments made from high-risk Medicaid Programs. A former law enforcement official said that this move would not make “any difference” as federal authorities claim taxpayers in Minnesota lost $9 billion due to fraud.
Minnesota Department of Human Services announced that payments made through Medicaid programs with a high fraud risk will receive an extra layer of verification. DHS has said that as part of its audit process, healthcare company Optum would review payments before they were sent to individual providers.
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Former FBI Special Agent Jonathan Gilliam said Fox News Digital that the new layer will likely not make a difference.
Gilliam stated that adding an additional layer would not help. “And one layer won’t stop anything, it might stop one part, but it won’t make a difference in the end.”
Gilliam argued that Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has committed “at least malpractice” due to the amount of fraud committed in his state.
Tim Walz was called out by Republicans for his fraud.
Walz stated that he would be accountable for the fraud.
Gov. Tim Walz has said that he will take responsibility for fraud within Minnesota’s Medicaid program and work to fix it. He disagrees with estimates estimating the total loss due to improper payments to be around $9 billion.
The comments were made on Friday, one day after federal prosecutors announced additional charges related to alleged widespread fraudulent activity in Minnesota’s Medicaid program. They suggested that at the very least half of $18 billion in Minnesota spent since 2018 for 14 Medicaid programs considered high-risk of abuse was obtained through fraud.
Walz, after a press conference about a unrelated topic, said that it was “speculating.” He noted that payments were cut for programs and providers suspected to have misappropriated Medicaid funds. “To make sensational statements or extrapolate the number, it does not help. This doesn’t help us get to the point we need. “I just need to get their help in prosecuting this.”
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Republicans have criticised the governor for failing to act sooner in detecting and eliminating fraud from the programs. Chris Madel, a Gubernatorial Candidate for WCCO Radio, said that Walz had been “willfully blind” over his seven-year tenure in office.
