State Medicaid Fraud Office Expansion To Include CHIP Fraud Investigations

The Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit is expanding to include investigations of Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) fraud across the state.

CHIP offers health insurance to children whose families earn too much money for Medicaid.

Attorney General Patrick Morrisey said this expansion puts West Virginia’s fraud unit more in line with the majority of states and that investigating claims of CHIP fraud will save taxpayers more money.

“I just view that if you have the ability to save an extra dollar more with really not much effort, why wouldn’t you do that for the taxpayers and for the beneficiaries of the program?” Morrisey said.

The expansion was announced during a Tuesday press conference scheduled by Morrisey, who touted the successes of the fraud control unit under his office over the past three years. During that time the unit was expanded from 12 individuals to 21 with the average amount of civil recoveries from fraud per year climbing 268 percent.

Investigations of Medicaid fraud were previously housed under the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources before being placed under the jurisdiction of the Attorney General’s office in 2019.