The House Energy and Commerce Committee sent letters to governors and state health agency leaders in 10 states on March 3, demanding records and communications related to alleged Medicaid fraud. The states include New York, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Nebraska, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington. This is not a fishing expedition. The committee already has the receipts.
In January, two individuals tied to adult day cares in Brooklyn and a home health care firm pleaded guilty to defrauding taxpayers out of $68 million in Medicaid funds. A separate scheme involving Queens-based adult daycare centers and a pharmacy allegedly drained $120 million from Medicaid and Medicare combined. New York alone spent $115.6 billion on Medicaid in fiscal year 2025, serving nearly 7 million people. At that scale, fraud doesn't just bleed the system. It devours it.
Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, a Republican from Kentucky, framed the investigation in terms that should be impossible to argue with. Two of his subcommittee chairmen, Rep. John Joyce of Pennsylvania and Rep. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, co-signed the letters.
It's our most vulnerable Americans who are most at risk from fraudsters diverting precious resources intended for critical, needed care.
The committee isn't new to this issue, the New York Post reported. In early February, the Energy and Commerce Committee held a hearing where experts testified about specific fraud schemes targeting Medicaid. Jessica Gay, a certified fraud examiner who testified at that hearing, identified applied behavior analysis services as a particular blind spot for state oversight.
If a state isn't monitoring ABA services closely, they are likely missing a considerable area where FWA is committed.
Trump administration probes have already resulted in more than $250 million in Medicaid funding being withheld following earlier investigations. The committee is building on that momentum, widening the lens across state lines and demanding accountability from the governors who administer these programs.
Several governors' offices issued statements in response. Five did not respond at all. Of those who did, every single one insisted they were already on top of it.
Hochul's office accused congressional Republicans of "playing partisan games" while simultaneously citing her administration's CDPAP reforms, which she claims shut down hundreds of Medicaid middlemen and saved over $2 billion for taxpayers. California's Newsom offered a spokesperson statement calling the state's oversight "robust." Colorado's Polis said oversight is taken "very seriously." Pennsylvania's Shapiro had his spokesperson issue three separate paragraphs on his fraud-fighting credentials as attorney general and governor.
Notice the pattern. Every governor who responded said some version of the same thing: we're already doing this, we don't need you, trust us. And yet the schemes keep coming. Sixty-eight million here. A hundred and twenty million there. In a program that dwarfs the GDP of many countries, "trust us" is not an oversight mechanism. It's an alibi.
Guthrie didn't flinch at the pushback.
Fraud shouldn't be a partisan issue.
He's right. And the fact that Democratic governors immediately reached for partisan framing when faced with a records request tells you something about how seriously they actually take the problem.
New York's Medicaid program alone cost $115.6 billion in a single fiscal year. That is not a program; it is an economy. And within that economy, two people in Brooklyn nearly walked away with $68 million. Others in Queens allegedly grabbed $120 million more. These weren't sophisticated state-sponsored operations. They were opportunists who found the door open.
Rep. Joyce put it plainly:
Medicaid fraud robs both taxpayers and patients, and we will pursue it wherever it hides.
That's the part that gets lost in the political back-and-forth. Every dollar diverted to a fraudulent adult daycare or a ghost billing scheme is a dollar that doesn't reach the elderly patient who actually needs home care. The fraud isn't victimless. It has names and faces; they just don't make the press releases.
The left's standard move on Medicaid is to treat any scrutiny as an attack on the program itself. Question the fraud, and you're accused of wanting to cut benefits. Demand accountability from state administrators, and you're "playing partisan games." It is a closed loop designed to make the program unauditable by making criticism politically toxic.
Guthrie rejected that framing directly:
We owe it to our fellow Americans to preserve the Medicaid program for those that need it most, and states have an important role to play in ensuring that Medicaid programs operate with integrity.
That is the conservative position, stated clearly. Medicaid exists to serve vulnerable Americans. Fraud undermines that mission. Protecting the program means policing it. These things are not in conflict.
Rep. Griffith reinforced the committee's commitment to doing the work regardless of political resistance:
Republicans in Congress will continue to do the necessary legwork to investigate allegations of waste, fraud and abuse within our Medicaid system.
The letters went out March 3. Governors and state health agency leaders are now on record as recipients of a formal congressional records request. Vermont's office confirmed it is "currently coordinating the State's response." Others will follow, willingly or not.
The committee has made clear this is a national effort, not a targeted political strike on a handful of blue states. Ten states, spanning geography and political coloring, received the same letter. The message is that the committee is going to follow the money wherever it leads.
Guthrie closed with a commitment that reads less like a press statement and more like a warning:
The Committee will continue to combat rampant waste, fraud, and abuse across the entire country.
The governors who insist they need no oversight had better hope their records agree with their press releases. Because the committee is coming either way, and $188 million in guilty pleas from a single metro area suggests the self-policing model has its limits.
