Known Medicaid Duplicate Payments Amount To $ 4.3 Billion During 3 Recent Years

Between 2019 and 2021, states made $ 4.3 billion in duplicate Medicaid payments, for 660,000 patients each year:

https://www.dailywire.com/news/billions-of-taxpayer-dollars-wasted-on-duplicate-medicaid-payments-musk-vows-doge-team-will-fix

Billions Of Taxpayer Dollars Wasted On Duplicate Medicaid Payments. Musk Vows, ‘DOGE Team Will Fix.’
"... a prime example of taxpayer dollars being mismanaged."
By Zach Jewell - March 27, 2025

Taxpayers footed duplicate payments for hundreds of thousands of Medicaid patients across the United States in recent years, totaling up to at least $4.3 billion in waste, according to a Wall Street Journal investigation published on Wednesday.

Some of the largest insurance companies in the country — such as Centene, Elevance Health, and UnitedHealth Group — received hundreds of millions of dollars each in duplicate Medicaid payments, the WSJ reported. The duplicate payments occurred after Medicaid beneficiaries moved and began receiving coverage in their new home state without being disenrolled in their previous state. Between 2019 and 2021, states, which are primarily responsible for Medicaid, made duplicate payments for around 660,000 patients each year.

According to the WSJ, over 270 insurers received duplicate payments. In all duplicate payments from 2019 to 2021, Centene received $620 million, Elevance got $346 million, and UnitedHealth Group received $298 million. The massive taxpayer waste uncovered by the WSJ was highlighted by Trump senior adviser Elon Musk, who has focused on cleaning up excessive government spending and slashing the budgets of numerous federal agencies.

“These are examples of medical fraud that the @DOGE team will fix,” Musk wrote on X, sharing a link to the Wall Street Journal article.

A spokeswoman for the federal Medicare and Medicaid agency told the WSJ that the feds are working with states to address the wasteful spending.

“Paying for a beneficiary’s Medicaid coverage in one state when that individual is already enrolled in a different state is a prime example of taxpayer dollars being mismanaged,” the spokeswoman said.

Duplicate payments drastically increased following the COVID pandemic when the federal government instituted new rules making it harder for states to disenroll Medicaid beneficiaries. In 2019, duplicate payments totaled $814 million, and in 2021, that amount increased to $2.1 billion. While states are in charge of administering Medicaid benefits within the federal guidelines, a spokeswoman for the Florida Medicaid program told the WSJ that the federal government is the only entity that has “full visibility” into duplicate enrollments.

Insurance company Centene said that it is required to continue coverage for Medicaid beneficiaries until a state disenrolls them. A message sent from a Centene supervisor to staff in February stated, “Please DO NOT close cases when you learn a member has moved out of state. If the member shows eligible and are out of state, they can still can [sic] utilize some of the benefits.”

States with some of the highest duplicate Medicaid payments included Florida, Georgia, and Indiana. In Georgia, six out of every 1,000 Medicaid payments went to cover the costs of someone who was already getting their medical bills paid for in another state.

Musk, though technically not the head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is widely viewed as the one calling the shots for President Donald Trump’s cost-cutting initiative. The DOGE team has already accessed systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where Musk said that “big money fraud is happening.”