00:00The Trump administration is freezing more than $1 billion in federal Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota
00:05as part of its ongoing crackdown on waste, fraud, and abuse.
00:09The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services paused more than $867 million for California
00:14and more than $200 million for Minnesota while it reviews what it's calling high-risk claims.
00:19Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the money will remain on hold
00:23until both states can prove the claims that they submitted are legitimate.
00:26The federal investigation will dig into everything from questionable in-home care billing
00:31to claims involving people with unsatisfactory immigration status
00:34to services allegedly provided after patients had died.
00:37Now, Kennedy blamed the Biden administration and Democratic leaders in both states for failing to prevent fraud.
00:42We are not sending Medicaid and Medicare dollars out the door
00:46until we have confidence that they are being spent lawfully and appropriately.
00:51As you might have guessed, the lawmakers in both states aren't happy about any of this.
00:55California Governor Gavin Newsom called the move a political stunt,
00:58while Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said the administration is cutting more in health care funding
01:02than it has recovered through fraud prosecutions.
01:05And speaking of health issues, Secretary Kennedy also defended the way his department has handled
01:10the outbreak of that explosive diarrhea from the cyclospora parasite.
01:14Critics have pointed to doge cuts.
01:17Remember doge?
01:18Well, they're pointing to them for creating this mess,
01:20particularly to the FoodNet program that tracks this very type of thing.
01:24Kennedy, however, said the cuts had no impact on this outbreak.
01:27We did cuts in the FoodNet program, but they were for redundant surveillance.
01:32We have done extensive forensics, epidemiological forensics,
01:36and we've identified the source of the outbreak.
01:43We and the companies that are involved have implemented a recall.
01:47We have got a laufen control.
01:47So we yeah, we need insidoubt for that case.
01:48We're dealing with that at this point.
01:48So let's...
01:48We got into the operatingļæ½ matOps.
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