Category: Medicaid
Court Hearing for DC Police Bodycam J6 Footage
Accountability is Not ‘Political Retribution’ – It is Justice Court Hearing Held for DC Police Bodycam Footage from January 6, 2021 Medicaid Makes $289 Million in “Unallowable Payments” to Dead People NIH to Reconsider Frozen DEI, Gender Identity Grants Worth Millions Accountability is Not ‘Political Retribution’ – It is Justice In my column for […]
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Tim Walz’s Daughter Thinks Journalist Had ‘Ethical’ Duty To Not Blow Lid Off Somali Scammers
‘You can’t just go and do this’
Medicaid Makes $289 Million in “Unallowable Payments” to Insure “Deceased Enrollees”
A decade after Judicial Watch reported that Medicaid, the government’ s fraud-infested health insurance program for the needy, spent $26 million to provide dead people in one state alone with benefits, a federal audit reveals the problem continues full-throttle with hundreds of millions of dollars in “unallowable payments” on behalf of “deceased enrollees.” It is […]
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How Medicaid Made a Billion-Dollar Crime Inevitable
The Minnesota Medicaid embezzlement scam remains headline news because of its scope and because the culprits were part of a…
Medicaid’s 30-Year Refusal to Stop Funding the Dead
For more than 30 years, Washington has known that Medicaid hemorrhages taxpayer dollars through fraud, waste, and abuse, including payments…
Somali Scammers Allegedly Stole Almost As Much In Minnesota As Entire Somalia GDP
‘Staggering, industrial-scale fraud’
How to win the opioid fight
Despite thousands of lawsuits against OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma now being settled, the opioid crisis continues to devastate families and communities. This is why there are massive national efforts to expand addiction treatment, develop non-opioid pain alternatives, promote natural remedies, and confront the Mexican drug cartels flooding America with fentanyl. In recent years, opioid-related deaths have finally begun to decline, suggesting that those initiatives are starting to make a real impact. But that progress may already be slowing.
The introduction of work requirements for Medicaid eligibility under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is producing unintended consequences for people in addiction recovery. Early studies show that declines in Medicaid enrollment correlate with drops in the number of patients receiving treatment for opioid use disorder. Because Medicaid is the primary source for buprenorphine and addiction services, these enrollment changes threaten fragile but meaningful recovery gains.
Conservatives champion individual responsibility — but responsibility also requires ensuring that systems meant to help people reclaim their lives aren’t working against them.
Work requirements aren’t the problem — they’re sound policy to preserve the financial stability and original intention of the program. The real issue is Medicaid’s regulatory structure, which is too rigid and dysfunctional to absorb yet another layer of complexity.
This crisis didn’t begin with work requirements. Medicaid’s own structure, combined with state policies, had been restricting access to effective OUD treatment for years. Patients face prior-authorization delays, prescriber rules that block lifesaving medications, and certificate-of-need laws that stop treatment centers from opening or expanding. Policymakers often claim these rules protect patients or control costs. In practice, they have choked off reliable care and pushed people in recovery farther from the help they need.
In states where prescriber limits and facility restrictions already make treatment scarce, adjusting Medicaid eligibility has a serious impact on the availability of buprenorphine providers. The problem lies in creating a policy that requires personal responsibility within an already bureaucratic structure that actively slows treatment access. When enrollment pressures combine with supply constraints caused by CON laws and prescription rules, the result is fewer people getting the care that keeps them alive.
This is especially true in Appalachia, which is ground zero of the opioid crisis. Pennsylvania explicitly prohibits off-site methadone “medication units,” while legislation has been floated in West Virginia that aims to ban methadone clinics. Local governments across the region routinely block zoning permits for treatment facilities, often caving to community pushback rather than addressing a staggering public health emergency. Many states still impose CON laws, restricting the ability of hospitals and clinics to add new treatment beds or open new treatment programs.
RELATED: Trump faces drugmakers that treat sick Americans like ATMs
Credit: Photo by Pete Marovich/Getty Images
On the provider side, well-intentioned prescribing rules have created even more barriers. Despite a dire shortage of addiction specialists, many states limit the prescription of OUD medications to certain providers, leaving primary care doctors — who could dramatically expand treatment access — underutilized or prevented from issuing prescriptions. Lawmakers have inadvertently created a bottleneck: too few qualified providers and too many hoops to jump through for those who want to treat addiction.
As the Trump administration continues to build a populist coalition that includes voters from Western Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other communities deeply scarred by opioid addiction, it must confront this reality head-on. Doing so does not require abandoning conservative principles, nor does it mean reversing work requirements. Those reforms remain both necessary and widely popular. But a serious conservative health care agenda must recognize that Medicaid’s regulatory architecture is undermining progress against opioid addiction — and America cannot afford to lose ground now.
Conservatives champion individual responsibility — but responsibility also requires ensuring that systems designed to help people reclaim their lives aren’t working against them. Addressing Medicaid’s regulatory failures is not just good policy; it is essential to sustaining progress in one of the most consequential public health fights of our time.
Editor’s note: A version of this article was published originally at the American Mind.
A Thanksgiving ‘What-If’ for American Healthcare
As we gather to celebrate Thanksgiving, with many worrying about the impossibly high cost of health insurance, let’s play a…
Trump admin brings international drug pricing to Medicaid
Presented by the Coalition to Strengthen America’s Healthcare — State Medicaid programs that choose to participate in the model will be able to purchase drugs included in the pilot at prices aligned with those paid in select other countries. {beacon} Health Care The Big Story Trump admin brings international drug pricing to Medicaid A new payment model from the Centers for…
