A new Senate report highlights startling amounts of health care fraud, including a payment of almost $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to Russian fraudsters and hundreds of millions to others.
The report, which points to some of the most egregious cases out of a total of more than half a trillion in fraud, highlights more than $21 billion in bogus claims billed to the federal government. Of that, more than $3.1 billion in taxpayer money was actually paid out to these fraudsters.
“While some Americans will be fortunate enough to earn a few million dollars over a lifetime, Washington is literally making these scammers instant billionaires off the backs of the working class,” the report says. “Yet, you never hear socialists ranting about this unfair redistribution of wealth.”
Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, chairwoman of the Senate DOGE Caucus, shared the report with the Daily Signal.
“Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders famously stated, ‘billionaires shouldn’t exist,’ and wants to tax them away, while government grift and graft is making billionaires out of riffraff,” the report says. “In fact, the $500 billion the Democrats’ proposed ‘billionaire tax’ would bring in isn’t even enough to pay the total cost of the $523 billion the government gives away to fraudsters every year.”
The report notes that fraudsters are getting away with more than $1.4 billion per day, citing a 2024 Government Accountability Office study.
“While Iowans are juggling rising health care costs, billion-dollar bandits are building criminal empires by stealing from government health care programs and using the proceeds to bankroll their mansions, luxury cars, and lavish lifestyles. Democrat socialists push higher taxes and socialized medicine, while turning a blind eye to the billions in fraud,” Ernst told the Daily Signal in a statement. “I’m calling out their twisted agenda that leave taxpayers footing the bill. Let’s put these scammers in the slammer and pass my Protecting American Taxpayers Act.”
The report says that more than $100 billion is “bilked every year from Medicare and Medicaid.” It says more than $100 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance benefits was paid to scammers over three years, between 2020 and 2023, while $1 billion is ripped off annually from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or food stamps.
The report references what the Justice Department called “Operation Gold Rush,” a fraud case that involved 11 individuals charged with being members of a transnational criminal organization based in Russia that allegedly orchestrated a multibillion-dollar health care fraud. They submitted requests for reimbursement to Medicare for over $10.6 billion using the stolen identities of thousands of doctors and more than a million senior citizens, and managed to get $941 million.
The report also cites Herbert Kimble, charged with billing Medicare more than $1.2 billion for body braces pushed on hundreds of thousands of seniors by foreign call centers. Of that billing, more than $200 million was paid. Kimble was arrested in the Philippines days after making the FBI’s “Most Wanted Fraudster” list.
“When the socialists demand, ‘Medicare for All,’ apparently, they really mean it, even if that includes Russian mobsters and the FBI’s Most Wanted Fraudsters,” the report says.
The report identified Brett Blackman, CEO of a health care software company, who was convicted for billing federal programs over $1 billion for unneeded equipment, with more than $450 million paid. He was convicted in May.
Alexandra Gehrke and Jeffrey King were convicted of submitting $1 billion in fraudulent claims to Medicare; TRICARE, a health care program for U.S. service members; and CHAMPVA, a health care program for spouses and children of permanently disabled veterans, and other health care programs for unnecessary wound grafts. About $615 million of the bogus claims were paid.
Brian Rowan, a wound care sales executive, is charged in connection with a $1.2 billion scheme in which about $614 million was paid.
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
