Medicaid Improper Payments are Much Worse Than Reported

By Aaron Yelowitz & Brian Blase (Original source CATO Institute)

“Earlier this week, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) raised its estimate of Medicaid’s improper payments from $36 billion (9.8 percent of federal Medicaid expenditures) to $57 billion (14.9 percent of federal Medicaid expenditures). Actually, the situation is far worse than these estimates suggest. As we discussed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed after the numbers were released, Medicaid’s improper payments now almost certainly exceed $75 billion – or more than 20 percent of federal Medicaid expenditures.

This year’s report shows not only a significant increase in CMS’s estimate of improper payments. Its methodology also shows the agency has been hiding even larger improper payments for years. CMS estimates improper payments in the Medicaid program by auditing each state and DC once every three years and then using the most recent estimate available for each to construct a three-year rolling average. The 2018 report therefore covered fiscal years 2015-2017, while the 2019 report covered fiscal years 2016-2018.”

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