The nation’s top Medicaid official said he is upgrading the government’s technology to stop illegal immigrants from receiving Medicaid.
“We now can do it a very straightforward way for the 44 states that don’t have state-based Medicaid plans for us to be able to audit it,” Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in response to a question from the Daily Signal.
“The people that we’re paying for, our citizens or not, in the state-based plans, like I mentioned in California, there’s a few other states, Colorado, Washington, Illinois, they have their own plan, so we have to now audit their plans,” he said.
Oz said in November that “more than one billion of federal taxpayer dollars were being spent on funding Medicaid for illegal immigrants” by five states and the District of Columbia.
Medicaid directors have asked the administration to rebuild the tech infrastructure of Medicaid to make auditing the program easier, Oz said. He said he is taking the first steps toward fixing how data flows in order to save taxpayer dollars and prevent people from taking advantage of the program.
“If you want to use technology to help Americans connect better with the health care system, you have to update them,” Oz said.
The former TV star said he is partnering with every major tech company to upgrade the health care system.
“The president has been supportive of this, so we’re upgrading the system, and my hope is that we can use the tech transformation tools of this government to bring people to work with us from the private sector, and every major tech company is a partner of ours.”
Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell is the White House correspondent for the Daily Signal.
Reprinted with Permission from The Daily Signal - By Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell
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