Vice President JD Vance announced Wednesday that the Trump administration is moving to temporarily halt certain Medicaid funding directed to the state of Minnesota.
Vance made the announcement alongside Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
The action targets what the administration describes as rampant fraud being committed against American taxpayers in the state.
“We’re announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people’s tax money,” Vance said.
The vice president clarified that healthcare providers in Minnesota have already received their payments. The freeze specifically targets federal payments flowing to the state government itself, not to individual providers or patients.
Vance stated the freeze will remain in place until Minnesota “takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that is being perpetrated against the American taxpayers.”
In a Wednesday interview with Fox News, Vance addressed the tools the federal government plans to deploy in investigating the alleged fraud. The Department of Justice and the Treasury Department will both play active roles in the effort to uncover fraudulent activity, Vance confirmed.
“There’s a whole host of tools that we have never used,” Vance told Fox News.
The announcement follows President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday, during which Trump formally announced that Vance would lead the administration’s “war on fraud.”
During that address, Trump accused some Minnesota Somalians of having “pillaged” billions of dollars from American taxpayers.
With Vance now heading up this initiative, the vice president described the strategy behind the effort as a coordinated, government-wide effort.
Vance said the Trump administration is implementing a “whole of government approach” to take fraud “seriously.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz, standing alongside Vance during the announcement, leads the agency overseeing both Medicare and Medicaid programs at the federal level.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, which Oz administers, oversees the distribution of Medicaid funding to states across the country, including Minnesota.
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