There’s a new winner in the Left’s Olympic Games of government waste and incompetence: James Shuford Price III, a man who ripped off Medi-Cal and Medicare for a whopping $60 million. A North Carolina resident with a California lab, Price managed to game the system by submitting over $85 million in phony claims for COVID and flu testing. What’s worse? He didn’t just get away with it for a few weeks—this scam ran from August 2023 well into 2025, draining taxpayer money with staggering speed.
Ask yourself: how does a single lab in California cook up mountains of fake tests and get paid without anyone in the bureaucracy smelling a rat? Because California’s Medicaid—known as Medi-Cal—and the bloated federal machine that runs Medicare are so bogged down with red tape, nobody’s actually watching the cash register. Price didn’t do it alone; collectors—hired like bounty hunters—fanned out to gather bogus test samples, even stooping to identity theft of doctors and patients. All of this under the noses of our so-called “oversight” agencies, who only bothered to look after millions were already gone.
Let’s not kid ourselves. This isn’t just one greedy con artist fooling the system. This is the inevitable mess you get when big government tries to “manage” healthcare with piles of regulations and no accountability. Liberal politicians love to brag about how government programs like Medicare and Medicaid “help the needy.” But who do they really help when bureaucrats turn a blind eye while crooks make out like bandits? Every dollar stolen is a dollar ripped right out of the pockets of working Americans and the truly vulnerable.
And what was the government’s main response? Announcements, committees, “Fraud Divisions”—more taxpayer-funded offices to “crack down” on fraudsters. Isn’t that rich? Politicians stand on the steps giving speeches about protecting the system, while the same old swamp creatures let the grifters operate for years. Democrats and career bureaucrats insist that bigger, centralized healthcare is the answer, yet every wave of these scams shows they can’t even keep track of their own checkbooks.
Here’s what Washington won’t tell you: the kind of government-run healthcare the left adores is a fraudster’s playground. More spending, more bureaucracy, and still no protection for patients or taxpayers. They talk about “fixing” the system — but their fixes just pour more of your hard-earned wages into a bottomless pit. When will America learn that government can’t take care of your health—or your money—better than you can? Maybe when we stop letting charlatans like Price treat the public till as their private ATM.
Source: Townhall
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