California only has itself to blame for Medicaid funding cuts due to fraud

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When will Gavin Newsom and his party learn that fraud doesn’t pay?

Maybe now, after the Trump administration announced that it is withholding an additional $1.2 billion in Medicaid funding due to suspicion of fraud. 

The announcement, by Medicare and Medicaid chief Dr. Mehmet Oz, is not the first warning California has had.

Dr. Oz previously withheld $1.3 billion in funding due to concerns about hospice fraud — which California leaders belatedly admitted was a real problem.

Now, Dr. Oz is pointing to the sudden and suspicious increase in the number of people claiming benefits in California due to age and disability. 

The state has seen a 24% increase in such claims over the past three years — twice the rate of any other state.

It looks dodgy — and it needs to be investigated.

Fraud is now costing California vast amounts of money, in two ways.

First, there’s the money the fraudsters steal.

Second, there’s the money that federal taxpayers won’t send to a state that lets it be stolen.

Democrats have ignored fraud for far too long — and not just in Sacramento.

There’s a handout mentality, fueled by a sense of entitlement.

And there’s also a laziness about oversight. Democrats seem content to accept massive fraud, as long as some of the money finds its way to a worthy recipient, somehow.

These problems are even worse in California, where Republicans are a small minority in the Legislature and rarely win statewide office.

There is very little accountability in a one-party state.

When Bill Essayli was in the state Assembly, Democrats kicked him off his committees for asking too many questions.

Now that he’s the lead federal prosecutor in LA, he’s holding people accountable — and not just for financial fraud, but for voter fraud as well.

California Democrats have been running on the idea that President Donald Trump has cut Medicaid funding. 

That’s not true: He only cut the rate of increase. And he did that only by imposing work requirements to qualify for aid, which California rejects.

The people who are really cutting Medicaid are the people in charge of the state who won’t dismantle the fraud networks and make sure the money is reaching people who really need it.

Democrats will complain, and they may sue, but the fact is that Trump and Dr. Oz are doing them a favor.

That’s because the biggest victims of fraud in California are Californians themselves.

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