In February 2026, I testified before the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations at a hearing titled “Common Schemes, Real Harm: Examining Fraud in Medicare and Medicaid.” My written testimony and my opening statement are available below.
After the hearing, I received Questions for the Record from Representative Earl L. “Buddy” Carter (R-GA) and Representative Debbie Dingell (D-MI). They asked:
- From a government-contracts perspective, what vulnerabilities in Medicare supplier enrollment allow foreign-controlled shell companies to exploit the system, and how enhanced disclosure or penalties for nondisclosure could help.
- How to strengthen the integrity of Medicare and Medicaid without jeopardizing access for beneficiaries or overburdening already overworked providers.
- How the federal government can better support the state and federal agencies responsible for protecting Medicaid.
My full response, available below, addresses a few recurring themes:
- One of the most effective responses to foreign-controlled shell companies is to close domestic corporate transparency gaps. The vulnerability begins at company formation, upstream of the Medicare/Medicaid enrollment form.
- Ownership opacity is a cross-program problem. Procurement, grants, and health programs all turn on knowing who actually owns and controls an entity, and enrollment too often verifies the paperwork rather than the person behind it.
- Recovering stolen funds depends on preserving dedicated cross-border asset-tracing and recovery capacity, not only front-end controls.
- Stronger integrity is a matter of better targeting rather than heavier enforcement: classifying conduct accurately, because fraud is distinct from improper payments, waste, and error; matching the tool to the risk; and treating analytics as triage rather than a substitute for human judgment.
- Effective Medicare and Medicaid oversight depends on stable funding, independent and continuous oversight institutions, and systematic federal-state data sharing.