A state agency is repaying the federal government a portion of $10 million of the Medicaid money that had been diverted to Hope Florida and spent on political purposes, said Rep. Alex Andrade, a fierce critic of First Lady Casey DeSantis’ charity.

In Andrade’s views, it deepens the financial impact of Hope Florida’s scandal.

Instead of $10 million in taxpayer money wasted, the cost is now $16 million, Andrade said.

“It means James stole $16 million from taxpayers,” said Andrade, taking a shot at Attorney General James Uthmeier, who previously chaired the Keep Florida Clean committee that received millions of dollars tied to the tainted Hope Florida funds. Uthmeier has defended himself, arguing that what he did was legal and the right thing to do to fight last year’s recreational medical marijuana initiative.

Andrade said he views the repayment to the feds as the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) admitted that the $10 million was truly Medicaid dollars.

“That is incorrect,” wrote AHCA Deputy Chief of Staff Mallory McManus in an email to Florida Politics when asked about Andrade’s claims.

She did not respond to a request to elaborate and provide more details.

The $10 million under scrutiny was part of a $67 million settlement from state Medicaid contractor Centene.

Earlier, Gov. Ron DeSantis described the $10 million as “a cherry on top” in the settlement, arguing it wasn’t truly from Medicaid money.

“When you do settlements, you can try to get as much money as you can, but this was in addition to what they were getting,” DeSantis said in April.

Andrade argued Thursday that new state records prove otherwise.

Under the Federal Medical Assistance Program (FMAP), 57.2% out of every $1 spent on Medicaid in Florida comes from the federal government, said Andrade, who chairs the House Health Care Budget Subcommittee that probed Hope Florida earlier this year.

“The rule says when you recoup from a Medicaid claim, when you collect it back from someone who didn’t deserve it in the first place, you got to send it back to the feds. You got to send that 57.2% back to the feds,” he said.

Andrade said he has been waiting to see how much ACHA would repay to the federal government, based on the math, from the $67 million settlement that sparked the scandal.

“If ACHA really does believe that only $57 million of the Centene settlement was Medicaid money, they would pay the feds back $32 million,” Andrade said. “If ACHA knows that the full $67 million in the settlement was all Medicaid money, then ACHA would pay the feds back $38 million.”

Andrade said he finally got an answer from last month’s posted payments: $38 million.

“It is exactly the FMAP share if all $67 million was Medicaid money,” he said. “If it wasn’t Medicaid money, then we just gave the feds back $6 million and everybody at AHCA is incompetent and just wasted $6 million in state money.”

Andrade contacted AHCA for clarification on the FMAP calculation, but said he has not heard back.

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Staff writer A.G. Gancarski contributed to this report.