Congressman Mike Garcia, R – Santa Clarita, recently introduced H.R. 8089, the Medicare and Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act.

This bipartisan legislation would enhance and improve the Medicaid validation process in all 50 states to reduce healthcare fraud and abuse.

“Every dollar stolen from our healthcare programs is one dollar too many,” Garcia said. “Millions of Californians rely on Medicare and Medicaid, but rising costs, fraud, and abuse threaten to undermine these programs. This bipartisan bill is a common-sense step toward better protecting your healthcare and ensuring these critical resources are going to those who need it most.”

The Medicare and Medicaid programs jointly spend $1.6 trillion every year. Health and Human Services Inspector General Christi Grimm recently testified that her office now receives hundreds of fraudulent claims per year – this level of fraudulent activity cannot be allowed to continue.

The Medicare and Medicaid Fraud Prevention Act implements a common-sense U.S. Government Accountability Office recommendation that would require states to check with the Social Security Administration Death Master File before automatically reenrolling Medicaid providers.

This would allow states to deactivate the National Provider Identifiers (NPI) of deceased providers and prevent bad actors from using those NPIs to defraud Medicaid or Medicare.

Ed. Note: The above information was provided to KHTS by Garcia’s office.