Ohio Medicaid Fraud Probe Could Explode
Rep. Brandon Gill is promising a hard look at a newly uncovered Ohio Medicaid fraud scheme, and he says his House Oversight team is not backing off.
Gill, who now chairs the Oversight Committee’s new Task Force on Defending Constitutional Rights and Exposing Institutional Abuses, said investigators are working through the case carefully and intend to follow the money wherever it leads. The focus, he says, is on possible waste, abuse, and outright fraud tied to taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments in Ohio.
“Hundreds of millions of dollars of your tax money is being wasted in an Ohio Medicaid scheme that we’re uncovering on the House Oversight Committee. We believe this scheme stretches into the billions of dollars,” Gill said in a clip shared on X on Friday. “The Ohio Medicaid Agency had years to figure this out. A reporter did it in just a couple months, and we’re building on their work.”
He added, “We’re saving you taxpayer dollars, and we’re ending fraud on my task force at the House Oversight Committee,” and later wrote on X, “Fraudsters stole hundreds of millions of your tax dollars through an Ohio Medicaid scandal. My GOP Oversight Task Force is pulling this scheme apart piece by piece,”
The investigation comes after reports cited by House Republicans pointed to troubling spending patterns. A state audit found that Franklin County, which holds just 11.5% of Ohio’s population, accounted for roughly 38% to 40% of the $1.6 billion spent statewide. Nearly 40% of that amount reportedly flowed to just two neighboring ZIP codes, totaling about $240 million.
Auditors also flagged a 15.6% error rate in eligibility determinations, which raised the alarm even higher. Based on that rate, improper payments could range from $800 million to as much as $4 billion.
Gill said the scheme may involve “a wide variety of shell companies that we’re facilitating as intermediaries to facilitate payments to organizations that weren’t providing any type of health care.”
House Oversight Chairman James Comer and Gill say the federal inquiry is just getting started. If the early numbers hold up, this could turn into one of the biggest Medicaid fraud cases in the country.