A “DOGE subcommittee found $2.7 trillion in improper” Medicare and Medicaid payments to people in other countries.
Since Trump became president, Elon Musk, the owner of SpaceX, has said many times that the Department of Government Efficiency has found “massive” government theft, but he has never shown any proof.
People on social media are now giving the wrong credit to a congressional subcommittee working with DOGE, which Trump set up and gave Musk the job of leading. This subcommittee is what found almost $3 trillion in fraudulent government health insurance payments.
“From February 12th to 14th, Threads, Facebook, and Instagram posts said that the DOGE subcommittee had just found $2.7 trillion in Medicare and Medicaid payments that should not have been made to people overseas.” It seems to be about a meeting of the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency on February 12. This meeting was also talked about at a White House news conference on February 12.
Reporter Brian Glenn from the conservative news outlet Real America’s Voice asked White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt during the February 12 news briefing: “Earlier, the subcommittee led by Chairman Marjorie Taylor Greene and her staff discovered $2.7 trillion in improper payments to Medicare, Medicaid, and overseas to people who should not have gotten it.” The posts on social media included video footage of this exchange. Some people in this room may not have seen that news conference. Could you say more about what the president is thinking right now?”
In the video, Leavitt replied, “Well, that’s another example.” Every day, DOGE finds a long list of scam, waste, and abuse.
Musk shared the claim again on X on February 13 and wrote, “Well, maybe this is why the Democrats don’t want DOGE to look into it.”
That being said, neither DOGE nor the subcommittee that worked with DOGE “discovered” the $2.7 trillion in wrong payouts. That amount doesn’t just come from Medicare and Medicaid funds. News that a different government agency had found $2.7 trillion in bad federal payments came out before Trump’s reelection in November 2024.
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Representative James Comer (R-Ky.) told the panel on February 12 that the government “has lost $2.7 trillion because of improper payments” since 2003. It wasn’t clear from Comer which government agencies made the wrong payments.
The nonpartisan U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) released reports on March 26, 2024, and June 27, 2024, while Biden was president. These reports said that since fiscal 2003, federal agencies had reported $2.7 trillion in what the GAO called “improper” payments, which are defined as “payments that should not have been made or were made in the wrong amount.”
Medicare, Medicaid, and other government programs, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, paid for the $2.7 trillion. They said the wrong payments were made for a number of reasons, ranging from “unintentional administrative errors to fraud.”
Reports from the GAO did not say that those funds were sent to people outside of the US, but claims on social media say that they were.
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PolitiFact’s Choice
The claim that a “DOGE subcommittee discovered $2.7 trillion in improper” Medicare and Medicaid payments to people overseas is not true.
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