A new investigative piece by journalist and Dao Prize winner Luke Rosiak highlights what he says is widespread waste and potential abuse in Medicaid-funded home health care programs in Ohio, raising more questions about how taxpayer dollars are being spent under federal and state waiver systems.
Rosiak’s reporting, shared in the form of an X article, focuses on what he describes as a “massive trove of data” on Medicaid billing that he says allows the public, for the first time, to examine how companies are reimbursed for home-based care services.
In his reporting, Rosiak writes that “under the guise of healthcare, Ohio pays people to go to Medicaid beneficiaries homes to perform homemaking and chores like cooking and cleaning,” adding that in some cases “the people performing these ‘personal services’ tasks don’t even have to be healthcare workers and, in many cases, are actually relatives of the Medicaid recipient.”
— Luke Rosiak (@lukerosiak) May 4, 2026
Rosiak’s investigation highlights clusters of home health companies operating in cities like Columbus, Ohio, where he reports dozens of small firms share office spaces and collectively bill large sums to Medicaid.
“The government is not, and likely has no ability to, monitor all the people it writes million-dollar checks to in Columbus,” Rosiak said.
He further detailed patterns in the data he reviewed, writing that many individuals involved in billing “share combinations of just a few names, like Ahmed Mohamed and Mohamed Ahmed,” with documents showing inconsistent spellings of names and placeholder birthdates such as January 1 due to unknown records.
Rosiak also detailed how, unlike other assistance programs, this system has no fixed monetary cap and can expand based on physician authorization, writing that “it only takes one doctor who will say yes to churn out enough forms to bankrupt a state.”
Rosiak’s reporting was discussed by The Tennessee Star’s CEO and editor-in-chief, Michael Patrick Leahy, and lead reporter Tom Pappert, fellow 2025 Dao Prize recipients, during Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
Pappert responded to Rosiak’s reporting by acknowledging that such programs exist nationwide but raised concerns about how they appear to be exploited under current policies.
“These programs do exist and they’re used in other states. You may even have heard of people who do this, where they take care of their elderly relative and get a stipend from Uncle Sam,” Pappert said. “The difference here, the allegation is that there are massive, essentially warehouse buildings in Ohio that are rented out to dozens, if not upwards of a hundred different companies that claim to be providing these home healthcare services.”
He further questioned how some businesses appear to scale rapidly, saying reports of companies gaining large client rosters shortly after opening “leads one to question, how do you have the infrastructure just opening your business?”
Pappert continued, “And who are these people? How did you know them? How did you have such a full client roster within hours of opening?”
He said the issues, as detailed by Rosiak’s reporting, are reportedly occurring in states across the country, adding that he will conduct his own investigation to determine whether similar fraudulent Medicaid billing practices are taking place in Tennessee.
“This is not just happening in Ohio. In fact, I’m going to start investigating what the conditions may be for similar situations in Tennessee, but it’s all over the country. Anywhere there is a significant population that is billing Medicaid in record numbers, that should be under immense federal investigation,” he said.
Pappert went on to argue that the patterns described in Rosiak’s reporting point to broader systemic vulnerabilities, particularly in how eligibility and oversight are managed within the program, and that certain foreigners appear to be exploiting such weaknesses in the system at the expense of taxpayers.
“It seems as though they’ve stumbled upon another loophole that can be used to fleece the taxpayer after they so kindly let them into the country in the first place,” he said.
Tune in now to The Michael Patrick Leahy Show – your AMERICA FIRST news talk!
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X.
