Arizona Medicaid agency and inspector general describe large-scale billing fraud tied to American Indian Health Program

Chairwoman Warner convened the Senate Health and Human Services Committee to hear testimony about a multi-year fraud scheme that Access Arizona officials say inflated spending in the American Indian Health Program, disrupted care and exposed gaps in oversight.

"The fraud we have seen ripped through the behavior health landscape is staggering," Marcus Johnson, deputy director of Access, said in his opening remarks. Johnson told the committee that Access identified a steep increase in fee‑for‑service payments to the American Indian Health Program between April 2020 and roughly March 2023 — rising from the tens of millions of dollars to the hundreds of millions of dollars in the period shown on the agency's charts.

Why it matters: committee members were told the scheme carried two kinds of harms — large taxpayer losses and direct harm to members. Witnesses described people being recruited into unlicensed or unsafe facilities, denied choice and basic needs, and in some cases moved across state lines.

How the scheme worked and how Access responded

Access staff and the agency's inspector general said bad actors used…