No, see, the fraud is "rampant."
Anecdotal discussions of "fraud, waste, and abuse" are fucking meaningless. Sure, any one of us can find a dozen stories of someone defrauding the government -- a dentist who bills medicaid for procedures he didn't perform, shit like that. In a country of 350 million people, there will be lots of examples.
But the STATISTICS on it are what matter. What percentage of the total medicaid budget is lost on fraudulent claims? THAT'S the number that matters. Just like stories of kids stealing packs of chewing gum from 7-11 are bad....but if 7-11's shrink rate is under 2% (which from what I see, it is).....sure, theft sucks, but it's a pretty minimal hit on the bottom line.
The Medicaid fraud rate, estimated by the most aggressive group out there (the lawyers who would bring qui tam claims that get them PAID) is 6.4%. And yes, 6.4%of the Medicaid budget is a large dollar amount to you and me....but it remains 6.4% of the budget. AND....if you want to eliminate the 6.4% of fraud from the budget, slashing the budget INDISCRIMINATELY by 6.4% is as dumb a fucking approach as you could take. Seriously, any business school analysis (not even graduates) would tell you that's pretty much the LAST thing you should do to solve that problem.
Dumbest. Fucking. Timeline.