Ron DeSantis Found the Right Way to Fight Medicaid Fraud and It’s A Model For Every Other State

Private equity is a significant driver of the problem. More than 500

autism centers have been acquired by private equity firms over the past decade — four out of five of those deals closing in just the last four years. When the same company profits from both the diagnosis and the therapy billing, the incentive runs toward more diagnoses and more hours billed, not better outcomes. Children on Medicaid are now 2.5 times more likely to receive an autism diagnosis than children on private insurance. Nobody serious thinks that gap is entirely medical.

Florida is targeting the fraud, not the therapy. That’s the right approach, and it requires exactly the enforcement infrastructure DeSantis is building.