Ohio State Auditor Keith Faber said Tuesday that officials are preparing to move on potential Medicaid fraud uncovered by a Daily Wire investigation.
Faber, a Republican running for state attorney general, said in an interview with radio host Bruce Hooley that he was ready to make the transition from uncovering fraud to prosecuting those responsible for it — and that The Daily Wire’s recent investigation had given him a great place to look deeper.
Faber and Hooley discussed the investigation by The Daily Wire investigative reporter Luke Rosiak and said they would certainly not be surprised to find a fair amount of fraud in a massive government program like Medicaid. Because the state is responsible for determining who is eligible for benefits at the federal level, all that is necessary for fraud and abuse is for someone not to look too closely at what’s happening at the bottom.
Still, Faber said that an investigation was clearly warranted — and that Vice President JD Vance’s promise to get his federal task force involved would open up much broader access to data.
The next step, Faber said, is a full audit to get comparative data from around the state and line up the different counties side by side — and if there were anomalies between counties that should show similar use of those programs, they would know where to dig deeper.
“If you have a program, for example, that I testified six weeks ago in front of the Medicaid Joint Committee, that literally is a $1.6 billion program, 38% of of that money is spent in Franklin County — and by demographics, Cuyahoga County is 16%, which should be about the same as Franklin County, you’re saying something’s unusual, that’s an anomaly in the data,” he explained. “And then if you find that 40% of that 38% — or more than $200 million — is spent in two zip codes, you’ve got something going on in those two zip codes that is not happening throughout the rest of the state with a huge over-utilization of these programs.”
Rosiak’s report, published on Monday, detailed dozens of “home health” companies operating out of a single, small building in Columbus. While there are legitimate uses for home health — to lower costs by helping patients avoid nursing homes — the services offered by such companies open the door for family members to receive a federal paycheck for providing simple home services or even just companionship to an older relative. Fraud, as Rosiak noted, is nearly impossible to prove because the services — if provided at all — are provided in private residences.
Vance responded to the report immediately, saying in an X post that he planned to have his Fraud Task Force review the findings and begin prosecuting anyone found to have defrauded the government.
“These shocking allegations, if true, show why the Fraud Task Force’s work is so important. I’m directing the task force to look into it and take immediate action to prosecute any fraudsters involved and stop all further payments as appropriate,” he said.
