JAMES CARTER: California’s Legal Medicaid Heist |
JAMES CARTER: California’s Legal Medicaid Heist
(Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY / AFP via Getty Images)
Gov. Gavin Newsom loves to boast that California is a model for the nation.
But there’s one “innovation” you’ll never hear in his stump speech: a Medicaid racket that makes Minnesota’s much-publicized fraud scandals look almost quaint.
While prosecutors in the North Star State chase shady nonprofits, phony child-care operations, inflated food-aid claims, and padded Medicaid bills—schemes that may have looted up to $9 billion from taxpayers—California has perfected something more elegant and more dangerous: legal theft, engineered by the state government itself.
Minnesota’s crooks broke the rules. California’s political class rewrote them.
The instrument of choice is the intergovernmental transfer, or IGT. On paper, it sounds harmless: local governments and public providers help fund Medicaid. (RELATED: Like A Heartbroken Teen Girl, Gavin Newsom Appears Jealous Of Donald Trump’s Relationship With Zohran Mamdani)
In practice, it operates as a state-designed money carousel. Public providers send dollars to Sacramento, the state counts those transfers as its Medicaid “match,” Washington adds generous federal funds on top, and much of the combined pot spins back to the very entities that started the ride—only larger.
Strip away the jargon, and the scheme is simple: state and local providers enrich themselves........