Op-Ed: Minnesota welfare-fraud indictments echo concerns about New York Medicaid spending

An opinion column published by the New York Post argues that Minnesota's multibillion-dollar welfare-fraud investigations illuminate vulnerabilities in New York's expansive Medicaid system. The piece centers on the Feeding Our Future scheme, in which pandemic-relief funds were allegedly siphoned through bogus "community-based" groups that billed for housing-stabilization and other services that were never provided. Federal prosecutors have charged individuals, including Philadelphia-based Anthony Waddel Jefferson and Lester Brown, with siphoning millions from Minnesota's Medicaid program intended to help addicts and the disabled. The author frames the Minnesota case as the leading edge of what Acting U.S. Attorney Joseph Thompson has described as a "systematic and wholesale attack on our state government programs."

The column emphasizes the scale of the fraud and the regulatory gaps that allowed it to flourish, arguing that Minnesota officials may have faced political incentives to avoid taking a hard line against schemes tied to Somali communities. The schemes targeted a broad array of services, including support for autistic children, disability services, addiction treatment, and child care, with invoices piling up and relief checks continuing as costs ballooned—claims the piece says illustrate a systemic weakness rather than isolated incidents. The author cites the indictment of the Minnesota cases as evidence that weak oversight can turn elaborate fraud into a housing, services, and welfare pipeline that draws in actors with little connection to the intended beneficiaries. The article quotes Acting U.S. Attorney Thompson describing the fraud as a "systematic and wholesale" assault, and portrays Minnesota as a locale that became a magnet for fraud through regulatory gaps and porous financial networks.

The piece also links the national debate to regulatory action from years past. It notes that Minnesota, in context, championed the 2014 Money Remittances Improvement Act, which the column says pushed the U.S. Treasury and state regulators to rely on looser controls for international money transfers by nonbank entities. The column argues that such measures helped enable cross-border misappropriation of funds, including transfers to Mogadishu, and that this regulatory posture has fed into broader concerns about how welfare dollars are moved and monitored. The narrative frames these dynamics as a cautionary tale for other states with similarly large welfare and Medicaid programs, including New York.

In New York, the article contends, the stakes are larger still, with Medicaid outlays totaling about $116 billion annually. The column highlights the Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program (CDPAP), a program that pays in-home aides to assist Medicaid-eligible relatives and has grown to about $11 billion a year in outlays. According to the piece, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has acknowledged concerns about the program but has pursued a plan to manage CDPAP through a private contractor rather than through broader program reforms. The column argues that this approach has limited impact on controlling costs and, in some respects, may have amplified them by entrenching the role of a powerful personal-assistance workforce. It notes that nearly 300,000 personal assistants are involved, and that unionization efforts led by 1199 SEIU are expected to raise costs further. The article characterizes the broader New York governance landscape as being marked by close ties between policy makers, nonprofit organizations, and industry groups, which it says can obscure where money goes and how effectively it serves the needy.

The author argues that these dynamics reflect a broader political pattern: progressives who push expansive social programs sometimes pursue cash-rich approaches to funding without sufficient scrutiny of program outcomes or fraud controls. The piece contends that New York’s welfare state may harbor nonprofit profiteers just as Minnesota’s did, but with greater political clout and more effective concealment. It presents a provocative view that accountability gaps in one state may be mirrored in another, inviting readers to question how similar safeguards are or are not being applied across large-scale welfare programs.

The column acknowledges that Minnesota’s cases have produced indictments and drawn national attention to welfare program integrity, while acknowledging that New York’s system is more sprawling and complex. It frames ongoing investigations and audits as essential to understanding whether the region can maintain robust services for those in need without permitting waste, fraud, or abuse to erode public confidence. The piece stops short of endorsing specific remedies, but it urges policymakers to scrutinize spending patterns, tighten oversight mechanisms for in-home care programs, and ensure that regulatory structures keep pace with program growth.

In sum, the column paints a stark portrait of welfare spending as a nexus of fraud risk and political incentives, urging a balanced debate about safeguarding taxpayer dollars while protecting the vulnerable. As Minnesota pursues prosecutions and New York weighs its own oversight questions, the central question remains: how to shield public funds from abuse without undermining the programs designed to help the neediest citizens?