I recently wrote a column arguing Attorney General Todd Rokita should intervene in a federal whistleblower lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that hospitals and insurance companies defrauded the state’s Medicaid program out of up to $724 million.
Three days later, Rokita moved. The attorney general’s office filed a brief that told the court Indiana cares about the alleged fraud.
That’s a meaningful shift. It’s also not enough. Rokita still has no plans to formally intervene, and without intervention, whistleblowers will be fighting alone against some of the biggest insurers and hospital systems in the country.
Indiana has a resource problem. Gov. Mike Braun can solve it — and give Rokita cover to act — by ordering a focused audit of the Medicaid claims referenced in the lawsuit.
Why Rokita’s intervention is necessary
The attorney general’s office has passed on intervening in large Medicaid fraud cases that were then successfully litigated by a whistleblower in the past.
Relators — private individuals initiating a lawsuit on the state’s behalf — can win without the state’s help, but it’s hard to fight billion-dollar insurers and major hospital systems alone. It often takes years and significant legal fees for courts to consider cases like this one on their merits, if they consider them at all. It’s harder for defendants to outmaneuver a government agency with virtually unlimited time, money and willpower.
In this case, the lawsuit was dismissed in 2025 because the relators did not show, in the judge’s eyes, that the potentially fraudulent nature of the claims had a material impact on the government’s decision to pay them. The lawsuit was later refiled.
The state of Indiana’s second statement of interest emphasizes the government does care about the alleged fraud and points out limits on the state’s ability to detect fraud don’t make fraud less significant.
Medicaid “is a vital public program that Indiana’s most vulnerable citizens rely upon,” the brief says, and focusing “exclusively on the State’s enforcement decisions made with imperfect information and limited resources undervalues the harm that false or misleading claims can inflict on ordinary citizens’ access to vital healthcare.”
Braun must order an audit
This brief comes after an unnamed spokesperson for the attorney general’s office defended Rokita’s decision not to intervene in the case because “Indiana’s limited resources would be best allocated to other high-priority cases where our Medicaid Fraud Control Unit has a proven track record of success.”
To be fair to Rokita’s office, the case is huge. There’s a lot of data to comb through, and the state’s former fraud and abuse recovery contractor wasn’t very good at creating a return on investment for the state. Rokita’s office should enlist the help of the state’s previous contractor, which was sold several times and now goes by Merative, or their soon-to-be contractor, Myers & Stauffer, to assist in analyzing the data in the case.
Ordering a full audit of the claims referenced in the lawsuit would ensure the state and the courts have access to the highest-quality data. Braun hasn’t responded to multiple requests for comment.
An audit would strengthen the relators’ argument, pressure the defendants to settle rather than fight another motion to dismiss and show that Indiana takes fraud seriously.
Contact Jacob Stewart at 317-444-4683 or jacob.stewart@indystar.com. Follow him on X, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.
This article originally appeared on The Herald-Times: Rokita moved on Medicaid fraud. Braun needs to move next. | Opinion
Reporting by Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star / The Herald-Times
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Jacob Stewart, Indianapolis Star | USA TODAY Network
