The House Budget Committee chair and five other GOP lawmakers introduced legislation Tuesday that boosts funding to fight health care fraud by $28 billion through 2030.
The Anti-Fraud Fund Act led by Budget Chair Jodey Arrington of Texas and Rep. Blake Moore of Utah is in service of one of the Trump administration’s top second term priorities: targeting government fraud. And it comes at a time when fiscal hawks in the GOP are threatening to oppose new war funding President Donald Trump has requested because of the cost.
Arrington has sought to convince them the administration is doing its part to control the deficit by fighting fraud.
The bill offers an extra $28 billion to the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program, created in 1996 to fund Justice and Health Department investigations and health fraud education.
“This joint DOJ-HHS program has a 7:1 return for dollars saved for every dollar spent,” said Moore in a statement.
He added that the legislation will empower CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to “bring accountability to Medicare and Medicaid providers.”
Other co-sponsors are Reps. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin, Mike Carey of Ohio, Addison McDowell of North Carolina and Jay Obernolte of California.
The legislation comes as House Republican fiscal hawks express wariness about a party-line spending bill Arrington is shepherding. That spending measure would include $95 billion for the Iran war and aid for farmers, as well as other Republican priorities, but no offsets to cover the costs.
It also does not include any extra funding for combating fraud, which Arrington has touted to his committee members as a major cost saver; Vice President JD Vance has echoed that argument.
Arrington also told POLITICO Tuesday he believes the House could put together yet another party-line reconciliation bill later this year — an idea floated by some in House GOP leadership — to assuage lawmakers who are angry their priorities are not in the war funding bill the House is now considering. That later bill could include more funding to fight fraud, he said.
“We have not tens, but hundreds of billions in savings on fraud prevention,” Arrington said. “This is not for this moment. We have to keep this [current reconciliation bill] so clean.”
The later bill could be passed in the lame duck session after the November midterm elections, he added.
The Congressional Budget Office, which determines whether bills save the federal government money, is developing a report to examine how more fraud-busting resources could offset new spending.
The legislation comes as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has ramped up fraud scrutiny in the government health care programs, primarily in blue states. CMS announced on Tuesday it has withheld more than $1 billion in Medicaid funding to both Minnesota and California over what it deems suspect payment claims.
Mia McCarthy contributed to this story.
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