New Minnesota Department of Human Services commissioner named as state deals with fraud fallout
The month of March will be a pivotal one as Minnesota attempts to emerge from the shadow of massive fraud.
The federal government says it is witholding $259 million in Medicaid funding and that the state has 60 days to prove that it has rooted out fraud in existing programs.
This comes at the same time that the temporary commissioner of the state's Department of Human Services was made the permanent director.
In his State of the Union address, President Trump singled Minnesota out for its fraud scandals, claiming that there had been $19 billion of fraud in Minnesota in recent years. The former Acting U.S. Attorney Joe Thompson estimated that $9 billion could be fraud. But those numbers have never been verified.
Shireen Gandhi was just named the permanent commissioner of DHS last week. She says the verified number so far is at least $300 million.
"So there has been about $300 million that has been documented," Gandhi said. "I don't know what the number is, but every dollar counts and we are going after it."
Long after the Feeding Our Future indictments in September 2022, schemes in other Minnesota initiatives, such as housing and autism, continued. In the past year, Minnesota has been implementing changes, allowing the stoppage of payments and freezing enrollments in more than a dozen programs.
Last week, Gov. Tim Walz announced additional antifraud measurres that include creating an independent inspector general office and increasing both penalties and the statute of limitations for fraud.
For years, the Minnesota autism program did not involve verification of such basic information as phone numbers, websites and qualifications. Gandi says the licensure standards are stricter now.
Changes are slowly taking effect. Starting May 31, Medicaid-funded autism programs will, for the first time, require a license. So far, only a handful of the 500 state programs have applied.
But as the crackdown continues, state officials concede that legitimate programs and their clients are being affected. As Republican Sen. Jim Abeler of Anoka put it: "We have been catching dolphins in the tuna net."
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