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After billions in Medicaid money was stolen by fraudsters in Minnesota, all eyes are on New York — where spending on health programs is set to top $115 billion in 2026.
Although New York spends more on Medicaid than Florida and Texas — both with much higher populations — there is no public oversight of where all the money goes.
This has prompted calls for a statewide audit, which Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul has resisted.
“This is not hard to figure out. When there’s this much money, it’s going into somebody’s pockets,” New York State Senate Minority Leader Rob Ortt, who has sent unanswered letters to Hochul demanding an audit, told The Post.
“There are people who do not want that information out there, or the audit done. It will lead to people losing money, right? The gravy train might end. It might even lead to prosecutions.
“The idea that New York State does not [audit] the single largest program in the budget is a real slap in the face.
Hinting at what lies below the surface, The Post recently uncovered how the state lost $1.2 billion of taxpayer money to scammers and middlemen through the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP) and how it spends up to $400 million a year on Social Adult Day Care centers, which mostly duplicate the offerings of senior centers.
Unlike Minnesota, which publishes a database of every Medicaid check written, New York keeps its numbers shrouded in secrecy.
Minnesota was moved to transparency after receiving a D+ grade for government accountability and transparency from the Center for Public Integrity in 2012.
Since 2015, state run TransparencyMN has published details of every Medicaid dollar going to vendors. In a few clicks lawmakers, journalists, and everyday citizens can see publicly how much of their money is going to anyone receiving Medicaid reimbursements, from doctors and hospitals to daycares and transportation services.
That’s one way local activists, reporters, and YouTube personalities have been able to expose alleged widespread fraud in Minneapolis’s Somali community.
New York has no such tool to see where $115 billion — the projected Medicaid spend for 2026 according to the State Comptroller’s Office — of taxpayers’ money goes.
“What’s happening with Medicaid fraud in New York State makes what happened in Minnesota look like child’s play,” state senator George Borrello, who represents the 57th district bordering Buffalo and has joined the campaign for an audit, told The Post.
“The fraud in Medicaid in New York State is so massive, it dwarfs anything we’re seeing anywhere else in the country,” he claimed.
Prosecutions are rare but often staggering, such as that of Zakia Khan, convicted last year of conspiring to defraud Medicaid of approximately $68 million through the payment of kickbacks and bribes.
Meanwhile, in June last year 25 transportation companies were fined $13 million for schemes to steal millions of dollars from Medicaid.
“It comes down to the governor. If this is going to be initiated, that’s where it has to come from. And we sent our letter to her and we did not get a response,” Ortt said of a bipartisan effort to conduct an independent audit.
“There’s a lot of people over the years who don’t want these resources available because, let’s be honest, there’s people who are knowingly abusing this system and are benefiting from it. Period. End of story,” he added.
New York has proved user-friendly transparency is possible. The state has a nearly identical tool as Minnesota for tracking state payments — Open Book New York — but Medicaid payments are conspicuously absent.
The Department of Health, which oversees Medicaid, refuses to provide any figures, citing privacy concerns. This leaves taxpayers and watchdog groups only able to access the information, which is compiled by the state and they have a legal right to, if they jump through complex legal hoops.
The governor’s office did not address issues of transparency to The Post, but said the Office of the Medicaid Inspector General claimed “more than $4.5 billion in cost savings and recoveries” in 2024.
The office also pointed to Hochul’s reform of the CDPAP scheme, which it claims has saved taxpayers “over $1 billion in the last year,” despite costing $12 billion to run in 2025, per Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Sam Spokony, spokesperson for the governor, also pointed out Senators Ortt and Borello had signed a letter opposing the CDPAP reforms in 2024.
Since the mid-2010s New York’s Medicaid spending has ballooned from $50 billion a year to reach a gob-smacking $96 billion in 2025.
New York spends 77 percent more than the national average, with spending per patient almost double the second-most costly state, Kentucky.
Texas and Florida spend a fraction of what New York does on Medicaid: $51 billion and $35 billion in 2024, respectively.
Florida and Texas both have laws giving public access to figures on Medicaid-related spending.
In New York Medicaid inspector general Frank T. Walsh, is charged with sniffing out Medicaid fraud. Lawmakers who spoke to The Post called his efforts a “whack-a-mole” operation.
“I guess they’re doing what they can, but you need a comprehensive review. They are not telling people where their tax dollars are being spent [and] I don’t think they care.
“Because if they cared, they would do something to address this,” said Ortt, a Republican who represents the 62nd district, which covers Niagara and Orleans counties, said.
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