Healthcare

Many Voters Believe There’s At Least ‘Some’ Fraud In US Gov’t Health Programs

(Tom Crane/Wikimedia Commons}

Many Americans believe there is currently at least some fraud in federal healthcare programs, a KFF poll released Thursday found.

While many U.S. voters think there is at least “some” fraud across government health programs, a greater number believes there is presently fraud in other parts of the government, according to the poll.

The survey suggests that 38% of respondents think there is at least “some” fraud in Medicaid. The poll also shows that 39% of voters think there is “some” fraud in Medicare, compared to 41% who said the same about the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces.

Of those surveyed, 40% said there is “a lot” of fraud in Medicaid, while 35% said the same about Medicare. Meanwhile, 29% of voters said the ACA Marketplaces contain a bunch of fraud, the survey says.

The poll found that roughly half of all respondents, 52%, think there is “a lot” of fraud in the federal tax system. Moreover, 46% said there is lots of fraud in federal military and defense contracts and 46% said the same about foreign aid programs.

Forty-seven percent of Republican voters believe that there is a ton of fraud in the ACA Marketplaces, the survey shows.

The majority of U.S. voters, 71%, said that access to necessary care for Medicaid beneficiaries should be a greater priority than rooting out fraud, even if it means some fraud may remain, per the poll.

The Trump administration has been prioritizing combating fraud across U.S. healthcare programs in recent months.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a Tuesday X post that his agency is protecting Medicaid “for the vulnerable Americans who depend on it.”

Oz added that healthcare fraud “doesn’t stand a chance.”

Vice President JD Vance’s Anti-Fraud Task Force and CMS announced in May atemporary nationwide halt on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies as part of an effort to tackle fraud.

CMS claims in a page on its website that “fraudsters continue to target the ACA Marketplace by submitting fraudulent applications, collecting millions of dollars in improper commissions,” adding that the agency is “cracking down by strengthening its ability to resolve consumer complaints, cancel unauthorized enrollments, and recoup payments inappropriately paid to the issuer on the consumer’s behalf.”

KFF’s latest survey was conducted from June 25-30 among a nationally representative sample of 1,321 U.S. adults, including 1,055 voters, in English and in Spanish. The poll’s margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for the full sample and plus or minus four percentage points for the sample of voters.