Minnesota Lawmakers Introduce Legislation to Crack Down on Medicaid Fraud, Boost Penalties

(KNSI) — A bipartisan group of lawmakers and the Attorney General have introduced updated legislation aimed at cracking down on Medicaid fraud in the state.

The Medical Assistance Protection Act, or MAP Act, would expand the Attorney General’s Office’s investigative powers, strengthen fraud laws, and increase penalties for those found stealing from the state’s Medical Assistance program, which provides healthcare coverage for low-income Minnesotans.

The bill would add 18 new positions to the Attorney General’s Medicaid Fraud Control Unit, growing the team from 32 to 50 staff members. Those additions would include 11 investigators, three attorneys, and four support staff. The expansion comes as the unit has seen fraud referrals triple since the start of the current fiscal year in October 2025. That’s more than it received in any full year previously. The additional staffing would cost an estimated $1.23 million annually, with 75% of that funded by the federal government.

Beyond increasing staffing numbers, the MAP Act would broaden the state’s fraud statute to cover a wider range of schemes beyond simply filing false claims, extend the statute of limitations to the start of a fraud scheme rather than capping it at six years, and add Medical Assistance fraud to Minnesota’s racketeering statute to make it easier to prosecute organized fraud operations. The bill also calls for increased penalties for high-dollar cases, with new thresholds at $100,000 and $1 million, and raises the maximum prison sentence for fraud convictions from two-and-a-half years to ten years.

The legislation would also allow prosecutors to seek additional restitution at sentencing rather than requiring them to document every dollar of alleged fraud before filing charges. Proponents say the change would speed up investigations and increase recoveries.

Critics say the timing is long overdue, as a new 56-page state report released this week reveals Minnesota agencies ignored repeated warnings about fraud vulnerabilities for nearly fifty years, and taxpayers paid the price. It concludes with a sharp message: the fraud vulnerabilities are well documented and well understood. What has been missing, it says, is the will to act.

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