Emails and records obtained by a Watchdog group show Biden-administration health officials targeted Republican-led states for audits last year over how they police their Medicaid programs, despite the fact that medical providers in several blue states, including California, seemingly operate their programs similarly.
The emails, obtained by Government Accountability & Oversight, a Wyoming nonprofit and government watchdog, revealed that The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, or CMS, targeted three red states — Florida, Texas, and Missouri — for audits and enforcement last year as part of an effort to crack down on what they now contend is an improper use of Medicaid dollars.
The bombshell is that nonprofit’s leaders argue the nearly 3,000 pages of emails and records they’ve obtained reveal a strong case that Biden’s CMS “politically targeted red states with audits, with a primary focus on Florida. The emails show that CMS officials ramped up their efforts to target that state at the same time that its governor, Ron DeSantis, looked as if he could be a serious challenger to President Joe Biden in 2024.”
Chris Horner, an attorney for the nonprofit watchdog, said that the body of emails his organization obtained “just screams weaponization” of the federal government.
“CMS targeted Florida at the same time Govern DeSantis’s candidacy to be the Republican presidential nominee was ascendant and the media was reporting that ‘the prospect of facing upstart Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is prompting whispers of angst within Democratic circles,’” Horner said in an email to National Review.
“For the past three years the Biden Administration has targeted Florida at every opportunity, and these emails make it abundantly clear – they are afraid of Governor DeSantis,” Jason Weida, Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration secretary, said in an email. “Auditing our rule changes is only the tip of the iceberg.”
National Review reports In the emails from early 2023, which the nonprofit has posted online, CMS leaders said that they were operating on a “tight timeline” and that Florida is “the only [state] we have concern on,” even though the agency was “aware that other states have similar hospital arrangements.”