House Lawmakers Target Health Care And Federal Fraud With Two Major Bills
House lawmakers have introduced two separate pieces of legislation aimed at expanding federal oversight, stepping up enforcement, and curbing widespread fraud across government programs.
The first measure, introduced by Rep. Brad Finstad alongside Rep. Derek Schmidt and referred to the Committee on the Judiciary, is titled the “National Fraud Enforcement Division Act of 2026” (H.R. 9576). The bill proposes establishing a dedicated National Fraud Enforcement Division inside the Department of Justice, operating under the authority of the Attorney General.
Under the bill’s provisions, the division would be led by a presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General. The head of the division would be tasked with leading DOJ efforts to “investigate, prosecute, and remedy fraud affecting the Federal Government, Federally funded programs, and citizens of the United States.”
Additional responsibilities would include coordinating multi-district and multi-agency investigations, assisting U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, setting national fraud enforcement priorities, and proposing legislative or regulatory reforms to close systematic vulnerabilities.
The second bill, introduced by Rep. Blake Moore of Utah, is the “Protecting Taxpayers from Health Care Fraudsters Act.” The proposal seeks to amend Title XVIII of the Social Security Act to expand funding and oversight for the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program through fiscal year 2030.
The legislation includes formal findings asserting that “health care fraud has grown into an organized, industrial-scale theft of taxpayer dollars, with fraud and mismanagement in the Medicare program alone totaling approximately $60,000,000,000 each year.”
The text highlights vulnerabilities across hospice care, home health services, and durable medical equipment, as well as enrollment issues within Affordable Care Act exchanges. The findings also point to enforcement returns, citing that the Health Care Fraud and Abuse Control Program “returned $12 for every $1 spent on Medicare program integrity activities of the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services in fiscal year 2025.”
To address these concerns, Moore’s bill authorizes multi-billion-dollar funding increases between fiscal years 2027 and 2030 across several enforcement arms, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, the HHS Office of Inspector General, the FBI, and the Medicare Integrity Program.
Beyond funding, the measure broadens the investigative authority of the HHS Office of Inspector General to cover programs established under Title I of the Affordable Care Act.
It also incorporates the State Children’s Health Insurance Program into the federal Medicare-Medicaid Data Match Program starting in 2027, enabling broader data sharing to detect fraudulent billing across all three public insurance systems.