California signed up and estimated 450,000 people for Medicaid who may not be eligible for benefits. The US Health and Human Services Department watchdog report was released February 21 and they estimated that the state spent $738.2 million on 366,078 recipients who were ineligible.
90% of the $1.15 billion in spending on sketchy payments were with federal money but the rest came from Medi-Cal according to auditors.
"If HHS has a strong reason to believe that California is systematically making enrollment errors, it would be helpful to show that in a more robust analysis," said Ben Ippolito, a healthcare economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. "The federal government should ensure that states are being good stewards of federal money."
Read the full report at the LA Times