Hawai’i Attorney General Anne Lopez is continuing to push back against allegations that the state is allowing Medicaid fraud, but acknowledges that progress needs to be made in its enforcement efforts.
Attorneys general from several states, including Hawai’i, held a news conference Tuesday after being accused by Vice President J.D. Vance earlier this month for allowing Medicaid fraud. Vance threatened to pull federal funding for fraud enforcement in those states if they don't improve or demonstrate their efforts.
“ Vice President Vance explicitly called out Hawai’i as not caring about fraud in our state, and nothing could be further from the truth,” Lopez said. “We take the investigation, prosecution, and recovery of fraudulently obtained state and federal funds seriously.”
The attorneys general from California, New York, New Jersey and Wisconsin were also part of the news conference.
Vance's callouts were focused on Democrat-led states, though the attorneys general of those states have refuted the vice president's claims and dismissed them as political attacks.
But Hawaiʻi's Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has been criticized for its lack of indictments and convictions for fraud. A 2019 review by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General found that the state had “low case outcomes” during the 2016-2018 fiscal years.
The report found that Hawaiʻi had 19 indictments and 12 convictions, and recovered $4.3 million total in Medicaid fraud cases during that period. It said that high investigator turnover, inexperienced staff and inefficient procedures contributed to the state's issues.
In Tuesday's news conference, Lopez noted the state's enforcement deficiencies while also defending the enforcement unit, which is housed in the attorney general's office.
“I want to acknowledge that we could do better with our indictments as well as our criminal prosecutions,” Lopez said. “If that's your only metric for determining efficacy, though, you're missing a large portion of the work that our offices do."
She noted that recruiting investigators has been difficult.
"We have positions that we haven't been able to fill with the kinds of people we need,” Lopez said.
The attorneys general's news conference was held following a roundtable between Vance, the Federal Trade Commission and other attorneys general on the issue. Some Democratic states refused to send representatives to the roundtable after reportedly being invited after Republican-led states. Others tried to attend or send representatives, but some said they were turned away when they arrived.
Lopez said Hawaiʻi didn’t send anyone, noting that there was no agenda for the roundtable. She added that the state hasn’t lost any money for its Medicaid fraud enforcement unit. Its budget for this year is nearly $4 million, and 75% of that is funded by the federal government.
She said that the attorney general's office may go to the state Legislature next year to request funds for Medicaid enforcement.
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