{"id":247330,"date":"2026-04-13T09:34:32","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:34:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247330\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T09:34:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T09:34:32","slug":"texas-to-pay-700-million-in-snap-penalties-to-the-feds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/247330\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas to pay $700 million in SNAP penalties to the feds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy<\/a>, and give us feedback<\/a>.<\/p>\n

New Trump administration rules designed to cut waste in the nation\u2019s food stamp program means Texas taxpayers will have to pay the federal government $700 million more each year to participate, state officials told lawmakers on Wednesday.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Texas Health and Human Services officials disclosed the cost in a presentation<\/a> to\u00a0 the Senate Health and Human Services Committee, which met to discuss how Texas curbs fraud in welfare programs.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Federal officials announced the new rules last year during the passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The rules force each state to improve the number of times officials overpay or underpay recipients in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, or SNAP, program. States, including Texas, have until 2027 to improve their SNAP error rate or face financial penalties.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Almost 9% of Texas\u2019 SNAP payments had an error, better than the national rate of 11%, putting it in the middle of the pack <\/a>compared to other states. But under the new rules, the state would be penalized more, unless it can bring down that error rate to below 6%. Texas has until October 2027 to bring its error rate down or it can face $709 million in penalties. An error rate is based on unintentional mistakes by the agency or the client receiving the benefits that results in an overpayment or underpayment. Monthly changes in a SNAP recipient\u2019s financial situation can result in an overpayment or underpayment.<\/p>\n

Currently, SNAP assistance is 100% funded by federal tax dollars but each state agrees to pick up a percentage of the administrative costs. Under the new federal rules, Texas will also have to pay 75% of SNAP\u2019s administrative cost \u2014 about $117 million more starting next year, according to HHS\u2019 numbers \u2014 instead of the 50% share the state pays now. Add in the penalties from the error rate, taxpayers will have to pay a total of $826 million more in 2027.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Because the October 2027 deadline will occur after the Legislature forms a budget, budget writers will likely have to set aside money ahead of time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

SNAP, also known as food stamps, feeds about 3.1 million low-income residents, including about 1.5 million children in Texas, as of March. Texas households receive an average payment of nearly $400 per month that is loaded onto a debit-like Lone Star card that they can use to purchase groceries. Unused benefits from one month can be rolled over to the next month. Starting this month, SNAP recipients can no longer purchase candy or sugary drinks<\/a>. Also, undocumented immigrants are not eligible for SNAP assistance.<\/p>\n

With 24% of the state\u2019s population receiving some type of assistance from Texas Health and Human Services, lawmakers are focusing hard on what to do to improve the state\u2019s record on fraud control, especially now they are facing a hefty financial penalty if they do not reduce the SNAP error rate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s hearing was scheduled after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick listed fraud as an interim charge or priority. Welfare fraud has resurfaced as a conservative priority following reports from Minnesota of child care fraud in that state<\/a> earlier this year. By comparison, Texas sees little fraud in its own child care assistance programs<\/a>. Still, Gov. Greg Abbott earlier this year has directed agencies to make fraud detection<\/a> a top priority.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are dealing today with a health care epidemic, but not from a disease or virus,\u201d said Sen Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, the committee chair. \u201cWith scandals in place like Minnesota and California drawing national attention, we, as Texans, must examine our own system and see how we measure up to other states.\u201d<\/p>\n

State record on fraud and surfacing problem areas<\/p>\n

Texas spends more money than many states to shore up its enforcement apparatus, according to health plan representatives and state agencies charged with investigating health care fraud, namely the Office of the Attorney General\u2019s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit (MFCU) and state Health and Human Services Inspector General Raymond Winter. Both agencies relayed big wins and recoupment of millions of dollars in fraudulent billing from providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In fiscal year 2025, HHS OIG recouped $465 million<\/a> in overpayments. The MFCU recouped another $125 million<\/a> and secured 123 arrests and 180 indictments related to health care fraud. Since 2020, the attorney general\u2019s office has brought back more than $1 billion to Texas coffers.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think long before we had this federal focus on fraud, waste, and abuse, Texas has been a national leader in the proactive steps that we\u2019ve taken,\u201d said HHS Executive Commissioner Stephanie Muth. \u201cAnd that is largely due to the leadership from the governor, as well as the leadership from the legislative body, and creating extra protections for our taxpayer dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even with the millions spent over several legislative sessions to better detect health care fraud, it\u00a0 is like tackling an elephant one bite at a time, Sen. Charles Perry, R-Lubbock said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association estimates that up to 10% of total health care expenditures are lost to fraud, waste and abuse each year, Winter said. Texas spent $53 billion on welfare programs.<\/p>\n

New problems are emerging, experts told the committee. Texas has seen a dramatic spike in the number of hospice providers coming to Texas since 2020, said Lisa McNair, the CEO and president of Hospice Brazos Valley, a nonprofit hospice company offering end of life care in 17 counties. She suggested not all of those companies are coming here because of increased patient demand. Some of them are coming because of the state\u2019s looser regulations.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe basically doubled the number of hospices since 2020,\u201d McNair said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t doubled our population.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Fraud in personal attendant billing \u2014 where the state pays for personal attendants for disabled Texans \u2014 is another growing problem, MFCU Chief William Marlowe said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His unit caught one Texas jail correctional officer scamming the state by falsely recording she was making visits as a personal attendant even though she was on duty at the jail. In another case, a Texas family kept the corpse of an elderly relative in the house for three years to keep payments for personal attendant services going.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNever underestimate the depravity of humanity,\u201d Perry said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story. See our AI policy, and give…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":241478,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[392,17347,11538,8096,27,29,293,28],"class_list":{"0":"post-247330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-greg-abbott","9":"tag-health-and-human-services-commission","10":"tag-state-agencies","11":"tag-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-legislature","15":"tag-texas-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=247330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/247330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/241478"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=247330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=247330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=247330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}