Harv's Corner 03/16/2026

Harv's Corner  03/16/2026

This message is not "fake news"; it is straight out of the Star Tribune.  This old-fashioned newspaper cannot delete inaccurate information, nor can it post false information without risking lawsuits.  Please take a moment and compare that to where you get your news.  If your source is the internet, please "fact-check" using as many sources as you can. You may be accepting lies for truth.  

Be comfortable fact-checking my articles for the truth.  If you can find inaccurate information in them, let me know, and we'll sue the source.  We can . . . you know why? . because the article will still be there! 

Harv

Cutting off the oxygen:  
The cost of Trump’s ‘war on fraud.’
Long before any Medicaid funding cut takes effect, an environment of targeted blame is already making Minnesotans sicker.
By LOANN M. HEURING
Primary Care physician

​On March 4, as Gov. Tim Walz and Attorney General Keith Ellison testified before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, the distance between Washington's rhetoric and the reality in Minnesota clinics felt wider than ever.

We are told our state is the "epicenter" of a fraud crisis. The committee's rhetoric evokes a community of grifters — narratives crafted to stoke ethnic resentment by framing Minnesota's safety net as a magnet for crime. As a primary care physician in the Twin Cities, I see how that rhetoric translates into physical symptoms. In my exam rooms, I do not see a cabal of fraudsters. I see a community under escalating federal pressure, exhausted by a relentless news cycle and terrified that the care they rely on is being used as a bargaining chip.

This siege did not arise in a vacuum. It follows Operation Metro Surge, when thousands of masked federal agents flooded Twin Cities neighborhoods.

What was framed as a crackdown on Somali American and immigrant fraud devolved into warrantless home entries, racial profiling and violations of basic constitutional rights. That framing was intentional. Blaming an entire ethnic group for the crimes of a few dehumanizes communities, provokes moral outrage and justifies federal overreach. Minnesotans did not capitulate; we organized, trained legal observers, built mutual aid funds and refused to look away. Now that narrative is being repurposed to punish that defiance — turning health care into a political weapon of retribution.

Last week's hearing centered on a claim that $9 billion has been stolen from Minnesota's Medicaid programs — an extrapolated estimate from payments across 14 programs over several years, not proven fraud. The Feeding Our Future scheme was a serious crime and, at roughly $250 million, remains the largest proven fraud in this story. Leaping from that figure to $9 billion requires a 3,500% escalation based on uninvestigated speculation. It also ignores the government's own data: Minnesota's Medicaid error rate is 2.1%, nearly three times lower than the national average.

If this were an honest crusade for integrity, the federal spotlight would be fixed on Florida — the nation's undisputed "capital of health care fraud." Instead, we see a glaring hypocrisy: an administration demanding "zero tolerance" in Minnesota while granting clemency to Philip Esformes, a wealthy Florida executive whose 20-year sentence for a $1.3 billion fraud scheme was erased by political loyalists. Their punitive demands for accountability here ring hollow against their silence regarding the federal killings of protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Exonerating the powerful while punishing our neighbors is not oversight; it is a campaign of retribution that substitutes ethnic scapegoating for the rule of law.

The health effects of this rhetoric are already visible in my exam room. I have watched fear settle into bodies as new or worsening anxiety, panic attacks, insomnia and elevated blood pressure. In minority communities, it appears as empty waiting room chairs and requests to switch to virtual visits from patients who fear a trip to the doctor might end in a racial-profiling stop. I see patients apologizing through tears — "I never cry like this, I promise" — worn down by a news cycle that targets their very identity. Chronic stress is a well-established risk factor for cardiovascular disease. Long before any funding cut takes effect, this environment of targeted blame is already making Minnesotans sicker.
​
A broad Medicaid freeze compounds that harm. When a weight-bearing pillar of health care is destabilized, clinics lose staff, wait times grow and costs shift to everyone. The first to suffocate are the 40,000 Minnesotans with disabilities and our elders in long-term care.

In medicine, when a clinician makes an error, we do not cut off oxygen to the entire ward. We perform a root-cause analysis to prevent future errors. A blanket Medicaid freeze is the policy equivalent of turning off the oxygen and calling it accountability.

We must name misinformation and retribution for what they are. When we fail to do so, we are not just risking funding — we are eroding the democratic principle that people should be held accountable for what they do, not punished for who they are.

LoAnn M. Heuring is a primary care physician in the Twin Cities. Her patients include Somali Minnesotans and families directly affected by the recent pause in Medicaid funding.