{"id":490697,"date":"2026-02-26T02:16:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/490697\/"},"modified":"2026-02-26T02:16:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T02:16:10","slug":"vance-says-minnesotas-medicaid-funds-halted-as-part-of-trumps-war-on-fraud-medicaid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/490697\/","title":{"rendered":"Vance says Minnesota\u2019s Medicaid funds halted as part of Trump\u2019s \u2018war on fraud\u2019 | Medicaid"},"content":{"rendered":"

JD Vance<\/a> announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration<\/a> would \u201ctemporarily halt\u201d more than a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to the state of Minnesota, escalating Donald Trump\u2019s newly announced \u201cwar on fraud\u201d.<\/p>\n

Vance said the action was to ensure Minnesota<\/a> was \u201ca good steward of the American people\u2019s tax money\u201d, part of its crackdown on the state following a fraud scandal linked to residents of the Somali community in Minneapolis, which prompted the administration to send thousands of federal immigration agents into Minneapolis and that resulted in the deaths of two US citizens and widespread protests.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we\u2019re doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that\u2019s being perpetrated against the American taxpayer,\u201d the vice-president said at a press conference in Washington, where he was joined by Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Oz said it was the first time the government had taken such an action against a state. \u201cIt\u2019s unponderable that you would take advantage of these precious programs,\u201d he said, adding that while Minnesota was first, other states would be next.<\/p>\n

Oz also announced that the administration was imposing a six-month national moratorium on federal funding for people who need durable medical equipment, including prostheses and orthotics. New enrollments for federal funds for such devices would be halted due to concerns about benefit fraud, he said.<\/p>\n

Medicaid, the nation\u2019s healthcare safety net for low-income Americans, serves more than 70 million people, including children, pregnant women, older adults and people with disabilities. Minnesota\u2019s Medicaid and MinnesotaCare programs provide<\/a> healthcare coverage for nearly 1.3 million people in the state, or roughly one in four Minnesotans.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis has nothing to do with fraud,\u201d Minnesota governor Tim Walz, a Democrat, responded on X. \u201cThe agents Trump allegedly sent to investigate fraud are shooting protesters and arresting children. His DOJ is gutting the US Attorney\u2019s Office and crippling their ability to prosecute fraud. And every week Trump pardons another fraudster.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trump administration has aggressively targeted Minnesota after a sprawling fraud scandal involving the state\u2019s social service programs. Federal prosecutors estimate as much as $9bn has been stolen across schemes linked to the state\u2019s Somali population<\/a>. Dozens of people were charged with fraud in 2022<\/a>, during the Biden administration, by a team of federal prosecutors in Minnesota led by Joseph Thompson and Harry Jacobs.<\/p>\n

Thompson and Jacobs were among the federal prosecutors who resigned in January<\/a> after senior justice department officials pressed them to open a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Good, the Minneapolis woman shot and killed by an ICE officer.<\/p>\n

Vance suggested that if the state was worried about the impact on services and low-income residents, it needed to cooperate with the federal government.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe main reason that we\u2019re doing this is that we want to make sure that the people of Minnesota have access to the services that they\u2019re entitled to,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Republican vice-president, who is likely to run for president in two years, also made it clear that he hopes residents of the state will blame the state\u2019s Democratic leaders for the withheld funding.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I would say to the people of Minnesota is: we want to do right by you; we think you deserve better public services; we think you deserve to have the benefits that you\u2019re actually entitled to,\u201d Vance said. \u201cAnd we encourage everybody in Minnesota, whatever their political affiliation, to work on the state government a little bit, because if we had some better cooperation we could have commonsense immigration enforcement. We could also have less money going to fraudsters.\u201d<\/p>\n

During the State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump singled out Minnesota as a \u201cstunning example\u201d of the fraud he claimed was rampant in blue states and placed Vance in charge of what he branded the administration\u2019s \u201cwar on fraud\u201d.<\/p>\n

Using xenophobic language, he disparaged Somali Americans as \u201cpirates who ransacked\u201d the state. Ilhan Omar<\/a>, a Somali-born representative from Minnesota, shouted back: \u201cThat\u2019s a lie!\u201d<\/p>\n

Wednesday\u2019s announcement suggests the administration will continue to find ways to target Minnesota and other blue states.<\/p>\n

Last month, Oz visited Los Angeles<\/a> and filmed a video alleging, without evidence, that the \u201cRussian-Armenian\u201d mafia was behind a large-scale hospice and healthcare fraud scheme. The social media post set off a days-long public quarrel that culminated in the state filing a civil rights complaint against Oz, whose parents emigrated to the US from Turkey.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JD Vance announced on Wednesday that the Trump administration would \u201ctemporarily halt\u201d more than a quarter-billion dollars in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":{"0":"post-490697","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-united-states","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-united-states","11":"tag-united-states-of-america","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","14":"tag-us","15":"tag-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}