For decades politicians have talked about reining in waste, fraud and abuse in federal government spending. One area that was particularly susceptible to such abuse was the federal Medicaid and Medicare programs. Democrat politicians would counter that the waste, fraud and abuse was miniscule and insignificant.
The non-caring attitude of Democrats was the equivalent of throwing gasoline on a fire because it ended up encouraging massive amounts of fraud. Fraudsters realized that the Democrat politicians and the media were going to do very little to uncover fraud. To those interested in committing fraud against the government, this lackadaisical attitude meant that there was very little chance that they would be caught stealing from the government.
If you were running a business and took a permissive attitude towards waste or fraud, your business would suffer.
Most taxpayers do not realize that the federal system rewards states for spending more money on welfare reimbursements. Some federal programs reward states with $9 dollars for every $1 dollar the states spend on welfare programs. This is a perverse incentive for states to make it easy for citizens to make claims for providing medical care to those on federal welfare. The states have little incentive to root out fraud because the states are making so much money off of the fraud.
Fortunately, the federal government, under President Trump, is now using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to root out fraud in the welfare system. Trump realized that the Democrat controlled states were not going to help find fraud in their programs so he is bypassing the states and using AI to solve the problem.
Most of the federal welfare programs that are run through the states require an audit of the funds that are expended. Millions of pounds of paper audits sit in government warehouses because no one has the time to go through the audits and check for waste, fraud and abuse. With the development of AI, the federal auditors can use programs to go through the paper audits and find the fraud.
If the states refuse to provide audits to the federal government, the federal government can now stop payments to the states. Of course, the Democrats are howling because for decades there has been little oversight of these programs.
American taxpayers should be happy because finally, fraud against the federal government is being exposed and prosecuted. The result will be more money available for the truly needy in our society.
Bob Spencer
Publisher
Manatee Herald
publisher@manateeherald.com
