The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) published a report stating that it has generated $5.56 billion in expected recoveries and savings during a six-month period thanks to its major crackdown on healthcare fraud. The federal watchdog agency also revealed that it has banned over 1,200 people and companies from federal programs.
The OIG report submitted to Congress said that it returned $12.70 for every dollar spent between October 2025 through March 2026, which is mind-blowing. “OIG is determined to hold bad actors accountable,” Inspector General T. March Bell went on to say in the report. Bell then explained some of the more notable actions that have been taken.
“Notable actions include convictions of individuals running sham hospices, identification of improper payments and vulnerabilities in emerging risk areas such as Medicaid payments for autism services, and uncovering gaps in foster care systems that contributed to failures to track and find missing children,” Bell wrote.
According to an article published by Breitbart News, the OIG report said that a big portion of the savings came from a handful of cases. For example, one case involved the CEO of a healthcare software company who received a 15-year prison sentence. He was then ordered to pay $452 million in restitution after he was found guilty of conspiracy concerning a telemedicine and durable medical equipment fraud scheme that was worth over a billion dollars.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in restitution also came from wound graft companies, along with $674 million in settlements with Kaiser Permanente affiliates and Aetna over inflated Medicare Advantage billing. The OIG report also revealed that 1,212 individuals or entities were booted out of the Medicare program after investigations were conducted. The agency excluded over 1,500 individuals or businesses in 2025 and 1,800 in 2024.
“Criminal referrals also dropped to 1,168 from 1,451 during the Biden administration,” The Hill stated in its report on the data. The OIG spoke with Breitbart and explained that the final figure for each reporting period is based on the official outcomes of civil settlements or criminal judgments. The news comes as Vice President JD Vance, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Medicare head honcho Mehmet Oz continue to push President Donald Trump’s war on fraud.
Oz, according to a report from Yahoo News, said that the government has already identified over $2 billion that has been improperly spent on folks who have entered the United States illegally. While fake Somali-run daycare centers in Minneapolis, Minnesota got the ball rolling for the administration’s efforts to bust fraud, things have shifted to scrutinizing fraudulent autism services.
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There are autism centers that are allegedly claiming to provide services and help for autistic children, but in reality, they are working with fake patients in order to pocket money from Medicaid programs, all the while taking resources from parents who actually have autistic children and need help. This type of fraud has been found across Indiana, Wisconsin, Maine, and Colorado.