AZ official exposes Medicaid fraud in state, says thousands on assistance weren't checked, verified

Arizona Senate Majority Leader Janae Shamp on Tuesday exposed Medicaid fraud in her state, saying that multiple people who applied for benefits were not checked or verified. 

"We had 388,000 people last year that applied for Access, which is Arizona's version of the Medicaid program, and 23% of those people were checked, and of those, 23%, 33% failed," Shamp said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show. 

Shamp said that 130,000 people haven't even been verified and were getting the benefits anyway.

"Why?" she asked. "Because we know that the CFR...the federal regulations state that there needs to be 100% verification, and we're not getting that done here in Arizona," she said.

Shamp, House Majority Leader Michael Carbone and other Republican lawmakers held a press conference Tuesday in the Arizona State Senate Majority Caucus Room to release a report exposing alleged fraud within a state agency under Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs. 

Arizona's Medicaid problems follow similar issues found in states like Ohio, where a Bloomberg Law investigation revealed that state health departments and Medicaid contractors often fail to detect or ignore blatant fraud, costing taxpayers billions annually. 

"I'm very much looking forward to pushing the governor to do an investigation, and hopefully the attorney general gets involved," Shamp said.