Federal health officials say massive fraud is bleeding taxpayer dollars and trust, with administrators pointing to roughly $100 billion lost each year and bold enforcement moves already under way.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services leadership says investigators have pulled tens of millions of dollars out of fraudulent schemes and are tightening controls to keep more cash from flowing to criminals. The White House and HHS have layered new tactics on top of existing audits and freezes to slow down abuse across Medicare and Medicaid.

On national television the CMS administrator laid out the scale of the problem and its human cost, arguing that theft from federal health programs has evolved into something more than a balance-sheet issue. He warned these operations harm beneficiaries directly and erode public confidence in programs meant to protect vulnerable people.

“They’re not just stealing your money, they’re stealing your health, because they don’t care about stealing from poor people,” he said. “They’ll take your health away. And they’re stealing the nation’s trust. Medicare and Medicaid were created in a high-trust environment. We assumed people would do the right things. We now are experiencing about $100 billion of theft a year, much of it because of the COVID pandemic’s impact on teaching criminals to move into healthcare.”

That same official argued that stripping fraud from Medicare could dramatically stretch the program’s solvency and explicitly tied enforcement to long-term sustainability. He said, “if we could just take the fraud out of Medicare, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare trust fund.”

So what has to happen? We already stopped $42 billion. Kim Brandt, who leads this program at Medicare, has already taken $42 billion just by not shipping the money out of the building. So number one issue is don’t let the criminals get the money from you. Number 2, an all-of-government approach to get it back.

You know, we’ve been working closely with Scott Bessant. Big announcements that he’ll make this week about how effective that has been.

Officials say the effort combines on-the-ground blocking of payments, cross-agency data matches, and criminal referrals. Freezing outgoing payments has already produced measurable results, and the agency is promising to follow up with law enforcement where organizers are identified.

Beyond traditional fraud rings, administrators described schemes that move funds through front companies and sham services, sometimes tied to organized crime or foreign actors. The picture painted includes everything from fake clinics to shell billing operations that harvest Medicare numbers and bill as if services were legitimately provided.

And they’re also running human trafficking because once they get a cash cow, like selling, you know, membership, club memberships to seniors where they basically get their Medicare beneficiary number, which millions have been stolen now, and just charge the government as though they’re legitimate bills. So this has to be shut down, and it is. We’re going after it in a big way. In California, we’ve got a third of all hospices in the whole country.

Part of the crackdown has included withholding payments while investigations run. The agency deferred $259.5 million in federal Medicaid funds to Minnesota while it reviews fraudulent claims, a move officials call a necessary step to prevent public money from being diverted.

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Leaders across the department insist this is not a one-off campaign but a sustained shift in how health program integrity is enforced, with administrative holds, data analytics, and partnerships with prosecutors. That combination aims to recover funds and deter new entrants from turning healthcare into a predictable revenue stream for scammers.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said, “For decades, Medicare fraud has drained billions from American taxpayers—that ends now.” The department says the message is clear: stop the theft, protect patients, and rebuild trust in systems designed to serve the public.