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By Jasmine Laws
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After just over a month in power, President Donald Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, is well into its "war on waste." Newsweek has looked at how the agency is faring in cutting costs in federal government programs such as Medicaid.
Newsweek has contacted DOGE and the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency via their X accounts, as well as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) via email for comment.
Why It Matters
DOGE has taken a "chainsaw" to the federal government as Musk and his unofficial agency seek to greatly reduce the size and scope of the federal government.
Read More on Politics
During a video appearance at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, Musk said that the Trump administration will "need to delete entire agencies."
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What To Know
Medicaid has been a hot topic in politics in recent weeks after House Republicans appeared to propose making cuts to government spending on such programs.
The program is used by some 80 million Americans, with a number of particularly Republican-leaning states having some of the highest proportions of residents relying on Medicaid.
The Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, a newly created body which is chaired by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, held its first hearing on February 12 to discuss changes to the Medicaid program and its spending.
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'Improper Payments'
During the hearing, a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report from 2024 was discussed, which found that $100 billion had been discovered in "improper payments" in 2023 across the Medicare and Medicaid programs.
GAO reported that this represented 43 percent of the government-wide total of estimated "improper payments" that agencies reported for that year.
"Improper payments" were described by GAO as payments either made in an incorrect amount or that should not have been made at all.
According to the report, CMS worked with states to improve oversight, and GAO reported that, following investigations of managed care providers, overpayments were being identified.
Stewart Whitson, senior director of federal affairs at the Foundation for Government Accountability, said in the hearing that 80 percent of Medicaid "improper payments" were due to "eligibility errors."
In the hearing, a series of recommendations for reducing the "fraud and improper payments" in Medicaid were made, which included initial validation of applicants' identities, eliminating self-certification, and monitoring the programs through improved technology.
Extolling Efficiency
Since the hearing, CMS has announced a reduction in funding for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) Navigator program to $10 million.
Navigators were created by the ACA to help people enroll in coverage through the health insurance exchange, as well as refer or assist with Medicaid enrollment.
The reduction was praised by DOGE, and it wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that last year, CMS "spent $98 million to enroll 92,000 individuals in federally-facilitated health exchanges at a cost of $1,061 per enrollment."
DOGE added that "12 of the 56 Navigator programs had an average cost of over $3,000 per enrollment."
In 2019, DOGE continued in its post, CMS's Navigator program "spent just $10 million and achieved the same percentage of exchange enrollment," suggesting that the program had room to become "more efficient."
'Dangerously Wrong' Thinking
However, the arguments that Medicaid is full of "waste" and "fraud" have been disputed by others.
Andy Schneider, a research professor of the practice at Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, wrote: "This premise is false, and the thinking is dangerously wrong."
While "waste and abuse happen in Medicaid," he wrote that most improper payments in Medicaid involve "missing or insufficient documentation to support the payment that has been made."
"The Medicaid improper payment rate (5.09 percent in 2024) is not a fraud rate, a waste rate, or an abuse rate," he wrote.
He added that the cuts in federal Medicaid spending under discussion among House Republicans "dwarf the amounts of fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid," and he called the proposed cut of $2.3 trillion in Medicaid spending "enormous."
Schneider also wrote that the $2.3 trillion equated to around 27 percent of the $8.6 trillion in federal Medicaid spending projected by the Congressional Budget Office over the next 10 years.
What People Are Saying
The Foundation for Government Accountability's Stewart Whitson, said in the hearing: "Congress can help President Trump's DOJ's effort by ensuring that entrenched partisan bureaucrats don't stand in the way of reform (...)
"DOJ's team of 30 found hundreds of billions of dollars funneled into wasteful, fraudulent and flat-out insane projects. But they've only scratched the surface. If this much fraud has been exposed in just a few weeks, imagine what else is buried under layers of red tape and government excuses."
House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Chairman James Comer said in the hearing: "With a staggering $37 trillion national debt, we have no time to lose.
"A key place to start is improper payments. Since 2003, the government has lost $2.7 trillion because of improper payments. Fraudsters, organized criminals, hostile foreign actors, and even government employees have siphoned money away from those who truly qualify for assistance.
He added: "For years, Republicans and Democrats on the Oversight Committee have condemned this waste. But now that DOGE is taking real action, Democrats are choosing to defend the bureaucracy and status quo instead of standing up for the American people."
What's Next
The subcommittee pledged to continue taking swift action on waste reduction efforts in the hearing on February 12.
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