Medicaid Paid More Than $207 Million for Dead People. A New Law Could Help Fix That.

MedPage Today December 23, 2025
Associated Press

The law mandates agencies to undergo a quarterly audit

Medicaid programs made more than $200 million in improper payments to healthcare providers between 2021 and 2022 for people who had already died, according to a new report from the independent watchdog for the Department of Health and Human Services.

But the department’s Office of Inspector General said it expects that a new provision in Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill requiring states to audit their Medicaid beneficiary lists may help reduce these improper payments in the future.

These kinds of improper payments are “not unique to one state, and the issue continues to be persistent,” Aner Sanchez, deputy regional inspector general in the Office of Audit Services told the Associated Press....

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