[FoxNews] More than 220 providers were terminated after investigators found billing for more than 24 hours of services in a single day
Florida's sweeping Medicaid fraud crackdown has helped drive a nearly $1 billion reduction in projected annual spending on behavioral therapy services alone, according to state officials, after investigators uncovered suspicious billing practices.
Tallahassee’s internal crackdown — which included discoveries of providers billing Medicaid for more hours than there are in a day — comes amid heightened federal scrutiny of Medicaid fraud, including investigations and payment reviews involving Minnesota.
The DeSantis administration said its approach aims to stop suspicious Medicaid claims before taxpayer dollars are paid out rather than trying to recover improper payments afterward. The strategy mirrors a call from HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to move away from traditional "pay-and-chase" models.
More than 220 Medicaid providers have been terminated for fraud, waste or abuse, while more than 260 have faced payment restrictions or suspensions. The state has also referred more than 150 suspected fraud cases to the attorney general's office over the past year.
Annual Medicaid spending on Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA), a therapy commonly used for children with autism, had been projected to reach $3.86 billion but is now expected to total $2.88 billion in fiscal year 2026-27, according to the governor's office. Officials attributed the nearly $980 million reduction to a combination of fraud enforcement, managed care and utilization management efforts.
Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) told Fox News Digital that its expanded monitoring uncovered providers billing Medicaid for services through every weekend and holiday for months, including instances in which providers billed for more than 24 hours of services in a single day.
"Protecting Medicaid means protecting the people it was created to serve," AHCA Secretary Shevaun Harris said in a statement.
"For children, pregnant women, the disabled, and our seniors, it means making sure they have access to high-quality care while ensuring taxpayer dollars are not lost to fraud or abuse. AHCA will continue taking decisive action to strengthen program integrity, hold bad actors accountable and safeguard these critical services for Floridians," she said.
Harris’ agency provided additional details on its crackdown to Fox News Digital, including how its new fraud-protection mechanisms work.
Through a pilot program with identity-verification firm SentiLink, Florida is screening for stolen or fake identities and hidden ownership structures among Medicaid providers. Separately, the state has imposed enrollment moratoriums on certain high-risk provider categories.
AHCA also told Fox News Digital that it has issued more than 1,000 adverse decisions involving Medicaid provider enrollment or re-enrollment since January 2026, part of its effort to prevent suspicious providers from entering or remaining in the program.
The agency has conducted 400 site visits to providers since January, including providers in high-risk categories such as applied behavior analysis, medical equipment and adult day care.
"Medicaid fraud is a national problem, and it is growing more sophisticated everywhere," AHCA told Fox News Digital.
"Florida is not waiting to be told what to do. We are building the model: prevent fraud at the front door, verify every provider, and follow the data. We welcome partnership with CMS and other states, because a fraudulent provider stopped in Florida is a scheme that does not move on to the next state."
[Breitbart] Multiple federal agencies announced on Wednesday that they had seized 90 shipments of fuel illicitly intended to be sent from the United States to a sanctioned corporate entity in Cuba.
The shipments, which reportedly mostly contained diesel fuel, were reportedly valued at $2.8 million and expected to be received by the Cuban energy corporation ENETEC S.A., which the U.S. government sanctioned due to its role in funding the illegitimate communist regime in control of that country. The federal agencies stated that the shipments seized were preparing to depart from Florida and Texas.
The seizure reveals that American authorities believe that the Cuban regime, desperate for petroleum products, is apparently seeking them in the United States despite the long-established alleged “embargo” limiting commercial activity with the Castro family dynasty. Cuba has been experiencing severe fuel shortages this year following the arrest of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro in January, who for years provided free or heavily discounted fuel to Cuba in exchange for political and military support.
Cuba especially needs access to diesel and other petroleum products because its dilapidated power grid cannot sustain the nation’s electricity demands. As a result of over half a century of socialist mismanagement, Cuba barely maintains a power grid and what is left of it routinely fails; the wealthy, tourists, and communist elites became accustomed to accessing electricity through private generators. Without fuel for those generators, the blackouts affect luxury hotels and other properties frequented by foreigners. This year, the power grid regularly collapsed, doing so five times in the month of August alone.
According to a press release published on Wednesday by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Wednesday, multiple agencies including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “developed information indicating that the Cuban government used ENETEC S.A. to receive fuel illegally exported from the United States” that led them to act to seize the shipments.
“A total of 71 shipments containing approximately 496,000 gallons of biodiesel fuel at Port Everglades were seized and 19 additional shipments containing approximately 119,000 gallons at the Port of Houston are currently being detained,” ICE shared.
[PJ] As two of the most infamous Democrat candidates right now seem to be in hiding, it becomes increasingly obvious that Democrats themselves know that when their own candidates are allowed to speak in public too frequently, voters can’t stand them.
Texas Democrat Senate candidate James Talarico earned himself the nickname "Talafreako" with his endless stream of heretical and radical opinions. From calling God non-binary to saying the border should have a welcome mat to labeling Bible stories for kids "insidious" to demanding abortions for transgender-identifying individuals to calling racism a deadly virus — and much more — Talarico has been so embarrassing that even he tried awkwardly to walk back some of his statements and posed for painfully fake macho pictures.
Now we are supposed to believe that the only reason Talarico has vanished for more than a week from the public eye is that he is sick, although he did not seem dreadfully sick when he first announced that issue. Weirdly, as my colleague Matt Margolis pointed out, his campaign even posted video of an event from February and tried to pretend that it was recent. Republicans have started ribbing Talarico’s campaign to provide proof of life. I think it is a reasonable guess that Talarico’s idiotic comments and effeminate demeanor are so unappealing to Texans that Democrats’ only chance is to keep him hidden so he is not a constant and painful contrast to Attorney General Ken Paxton.
Meanwhile, over in California, Republican Steve Hilton is running such a good campaign for governor that Democrats are panicking. Child-trafficking, Biden-era HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has attempted to attend as few events as possible, trusting the fraud machine in California to get him through. And no wonder, because when voters actually hear Hilton and Becerra debate the issues, Hilton is, without any competition, the winner:
[PJ] Few things bring me more workday pleasure than an opportunity to mock The Lightbringer, the man whose very nomination caused the oceans to stop rising (or maybe stop receding), healed our racial divisions (except for those tricksy Jews and also white guys), and ushered in "a new way of being on the planet."
Of course, it's even more pleasurable when I don't have to think about Barack Obama at all, but he was never one of those "absence makes the heart grow fonder" people, so I have to leap on those mocking opportunities whenever they present themselves.
Today, for example, when I do believe I'll celebrate filing this column by shaking myself a martini.
Shall we begin?
The setup began Monday with a news item you're probably already well aware of. Despite polls showing Michigan Islamo-Commie Democrat Abdul El-Sayed with an insurmountable 417-point lead over his rival, that Republican dude that nobody is 100% certain is actually running.
Campaigns comfortably in the lead don't interrupt Obama from doing whatever it is he does these days — occasionally scold black men and count his Netflix money, I think — for a joint campaign stop on the first day of early voting.
That planned October 24 joint campaign appearance might get a little awkward, given what we just learned SAYED! really thought about the Lightbringer's performance as president.
And Another Thing: My editor assures me that there is a Republican nominee, that his name is Mike Rogers, and that he's been both on the campaign trail and occasionally (but only very occasionally) in the news. My editor also says that Al-Sayed now just uses "SAYED!" in his campaign materials. So, kind of like Madonna, but instead of getting you out on the dance floor, Madonna wanted to force you onto a prayer mat and confiscate your wealth.
Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited
[Regnum] Roscosmos, together with the scientific team of the Spektr-RG observatory, presented for the first time in Russia a series of artistic visualizations of space objects, created based on X-ray data from the Pavlinsky ART-XC telescope. The state corporation's press service reported this on October 8.
The project allowed scientists to imagine what some of the most extreme deep-sky objects, inaccessible to conventional optical observation, might look like. These include black holes, neutron stars, and quasars, whose internal processes can be studied in X-rays.
The series includes visualizations of five objects, including the binary system Swift J1727.8−1613, where a black hole is devouring matter from a companion star, forming a hot accretion disk; the millisecond X-ray pulsar SRGA J144 459.2−604 207; the supernova SN 2023ixf in the galaxy M101; the quasar SRGA J230 631.0+155 633; and one of the most famous X-ray sources in the Galaxy, Hercules X-1.
Roscosmos clarified that the artists created the visualizations based on data and calculations prepared by scientists from the Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, who are part of the ART-XC telescope's scientific team.
The state corporation noted that a separate focus of the ART-XC program is the development of autonomous space navigation based on observations of isolated pulsars—stable and precise "beacons" of the Universe. This technology will eventually allow spacecraft to independently determine their position in deep space without constant communication with Earth.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
BREAKING: Israel says pilot tried to hijack flydubai flight to Tel Aviv that diverted, landed in Saudi Arabia
