← The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show
It's a Numbers Game: Medicaid Fraud, Falling Birthrates & the Future of America’s Cities
00:45:07
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Ryan Graduski
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Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. Work it screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures if you're feeling
- [01:36]
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- [02:05]
Luke Rosiak
That's innerbalance.com it never happens at a good time.
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Ryan Graduski
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- [02:38]
Ryan Graduski
Welcome back to a numbers game with Ryan Graduski, everybody. Happy Monday. I hope everyone had a great Mother's Day. I try to remember holidays that happen on the weekend the Friday before. And I just, I never look at the calendar like, what's going on? So I didn't wish anyone happy Mother's and Friday. Hope you all had a great Mother's Day over the weekend. Everyone who celebrated, all the moms out there, I know us kids are the ones who made you crazy. So hope that your kids made it up to you and gave you a good day. I want to talk to you guys. I have we're going to talk about Ohio welfare fraud during the interview segment. We're going to talk about the, about the redistricting effort during Ask Me anything. But first, I want to get into a conversation I had with my relatives over the weekend that I thought was very introspective for a trend that is happening with data that is, I think, really important to kind of grasp at this moment. So I was with my family on Mother's Day, as most of you, probably many of you were, and we started talking about Catholic schools. Now, if you're Catholic and you grew up in a city, Catholic education kind of comes up in conversation regularly or not regularly, but it happens more than you would think it would because a lot of Catholic schools are closing. And why are they closing? And is it the administration? Is it high tuition prices? Is it whatever? And my, my baby boomer relatives, relatives who are in their 60s and 70s, always insist it's just because tuition is too high people can't afford anymore. And that's really where the schools have gone awry. And I've insisted. No, it's really because now in New York City, by the way, I want to have a little caveat. In New York City, dozens of Catholic schools have closed over the last 10 years or they've consolidated or whatnot. But there's less schools than there were 10 years ago. It costs about probably $10,000 a year to send your kids to Catholic school, which is expensive. And I ran the numbers, and there's been a decline over the last 10 years of 54,500 kids in Catholic schools in New York city. It's a 31% decline. And yeah, tuition's high but if you're a middle class family, you can't afford tuitions. But a lot of these institutions were built in the 40s and the 50s and some in the 60s when there was just the baby boom generation, there were a lot more children. These institutions are big built for a different type of generation of people. And I think that that's what people aren't grasping. There is a false sense of permanence among people that because things were a certain way, they will always be a certain way. And it's the, one of the, one of the big lies that people believe in is that is this overall sense of permanence. And, and all of these new apartments and condos that have been built in New York City, especially the last decade, and the new ones, the affordable ones that Mandani is saying he's going to be able to build, they're really built for single people or for couples without children or maybe couples with one child. They are not for families. And I started looking at different numbers and different articles that come out over the course of the week. Ironically, there was, there was an article in the Economist I want to talk about, but you guys remember in the 2000s there was a trend where in the early aughts where to show you had wealth, to show you had money if you were a woman, especially not especially if you were a woman. And back in the odds, we knew what a woman was, that there was a trend where you would have a designer pocketbook or designer handbag and a little dog in it. I'm half my audience is like, what are you talking about? But in the odds, just trust me on this. In the odds, there were a lot of well to do, wealthier women with big giant handbags and little dogs in them. And it showed. Look, I had money. Paris Hilton was doing it. Britney Spears was doing it. Now in the 2000 and 20s, having a child, having two children is your way of flexing how much money you have. So there was the article in the Economist called City Parenting is a Financial Flex. It looked at the growing population of specifically white children, non Hispanic white children in places like Los Angeles, New York, Washington D.C. and Chicago. How wealthy white, very progressive parents are moving to these places because they want to be in artsy, multiracial, multicultural hubs, expensive zip codes or emerging expensive zip codes because they're gentrifying. And then they go vote for Brandon Johnson or Zora Mandani. This is a, this is from a quote from the article. Cities across America are losing children fast. Across Chicago between 2010 and 2024. According to the Census Bureau data, the total population aged under declined by 22%. In Los Angeles, the figure was 23%. In New York City, 12%. And yet in the country's richest, densest cities, there is one group noticeably defined this trend. Wealthier white families. In Chicago, the population of non Hispanic white children grew by 6% from 2010 to 2024, faster than the white population grew overall. In Washington D.C. it rose remarkably 62%. Their parents are professionals who grew up in boring suburbs and do not, do not want their kids to. What is interesting about the article is they include graphics of where, of the maps of these cities, of where the population of white children is growing and shrinking. And what you see very obviously is the middle and working class communities in these cities is where the white population is shrinking the most. So the south side of Chicago, Staten Island, South Brooklyn, Western and northeast, eastern Queens. These are places that white families in generation two generations ago. Even more than that though, if you want to go back to like the Archie Bunker era where a family could afford to marry young, get an apartment, then a house and then have 2, 3, 4, however many children send their kids to the local Catholic school or the local public school even. Where are those families today? They either A, did not get married or have kids or they're waiting a little longer or B, they're in South Carolina, they're in Florida, they're in Texas, they're in Idaho. They are not there. They just, they couldn't afford to make it in the city as a middle class or working class person, especially a white person. That's what the article is talking about. So that's what I'm specifying now that this is not a trend also among middle class black people or middle class Latinos, because it absolutely is. Now who is left then in these cities? It is aging population with multi million dollar homes they've been sitting on. It is progressive transplants and it's immigrants. Those are the ones left in the cities. So the very, very wealthy, the aging middle class that are that all their wealth is in their real estate and it is the immigrant lower class and the middle class, the working class have been squeezed out and things are looking like they are getting worse, not better in that trajectory, especially when it comes to education and schools and kids. The New York Times had two articles over the weekend that really kind of cemented this first one. Enrollment in New York City's public schools could plunge by as many as 153,000 students during the next decade, according to a stark new forecast that highlights the continuing toll of falling birth rates and aging population and exodus of families. The city's public school system, the nation's largest, has lost more than 123,000 students since the coronavirus pandemic, reflecting a nationwide decline that has exhausted budgets, led to layoffs and shuttered schools. If the outlook for New York schools pans out, the district will have shrunk by a quarter during a 15 year period ending in 2035, according to the latest annual projections from the School Construction Authority Authority, a 25% reduction in 15 years. Remember, most people go to public schools. This far exceeds what the Catholic schools lost. What I talked about earlier also, by the way, when we were talking about the falling Catholic school enrollment rate, public school decline is more than double that. So the numbers were already working against the overall population. And obviously the Catholic school population shrunk as fast at a higher percentage rate because of the increased cost. And while New York City is definitely an outlier for many, many, many things and for many, many reasons, it is not an outlier when it comes to falling populations of students. This is happening nationwide. The second article from the New York Times. The number of children attending public schools from K through 12 has fallen in 30 states since mid-2010s since the pandemic. Public school enrollment has fallen by more than 1 million kids. But elementary schools began falling. Their population began falling before the COVID pandemic. Half a decade before the COVID pandemic. Their numbers started falling in 2015. Not only in big cities like New York, Chicago, LA. But in smaller and suburban districts. They are shrinking at a similar rate. Competition for children is more heated than it's ever been. If you are, if you're on Instagram and you are a parent, so you're constantly in like feeds and searches of parenting stuff. The amount of advertisements you get for schools to go to this school or that school is very large. Even public schools now have budgets to advertise to get parents who send their kids to those schools. It is a fight for those bodies in desks, those little bodies and desks. No bodies means less funding. And public schools are trying to avoid that because of the powerful teachers unions, especially in big blue states. But they're in all states. But in blue states, those teacher unions are right now in the middle. As we're going into budget negotiations in all of these states springs when they do a lot of budgeting fights, we are going to be seeing a bigger and bigger fight for public school education because There are less students, but they need to keep the budgets high because they need to employ all their union employees. As of 2023, 80.4% of kids still attend public school. That is down pretty significantly considering public schools used to be like 90%. 7% attend charter schools. 12.6% either attend religious school, private schools, or our home schools. But they estimate, the New York Times estimates, that the number of kids in elementary school will have fallen from 22.5 million to 20.5 million. About those numbers, 2 million from 2015 to 2030. This is tied to lower levels of immigration and lower fertility rates. I mean, that's just. And also the fact that public schools have failed so often. I mean, people are not picking public schools also because public schools are. If you look at the NEAP results, Catholic schools do very well in the testing. Homeschooling does very well in the testing. A lot of private schools do very well in the testing. Public schools are doing pretty terrible in most places. There are a few exceptions, and there are a few exceptions across different states in different parts of the country. However, they're not doing well. It's a bad product that's given away for. For, you know, for free, but we pay for it, but, you know, it's free to the. To the parent individually at an enormous cost to the taxpayer. And they're delivering a poor quality, a poor product. And even then, they are refusing the free product. Do you understand that only a leftist could do this? They can make something that's free and no one even wants to take it. States with the highest decline in overall enrollment. Listen to this, because this is. I've talked a lot about New York City, and I know that New York City is not the whole world, despite what people in New York City think. It's not just New York City. Number one state is West Virginia, declined 13.6%, or 38%, thousand students from 2014 to 2024. Number two state, Mississippi, down 12%, 59,000 students. Number three, New Hampshire, 21,000 students, or 11%. Number four, Illinois, down 10%, 207,000 students. And number five is New Mexico, also down almost 10%, 9.8 with negative 33,000. The places that are bucking the trend, the places that are growing fast, or Washington, D.C. north Dakota, Idaho, Utah and Delaware. There's. There's. That's blue, red, you know, purple. That's southern, northeastern, western. That's all over the map right there. Less babies means less students. Less students means less money for schools and for education. You know, As a whole. And sadly, education in many parts of the country are not about students. They're about adults. They're about. And we saw this during COVID perfect example, during COVID during the woke era, what is good for parents to feel good? That they have their kid, if they have their kid can't read or do math, that they are getting the correct type of education, that they are in the correct type of environment? Or why are schools closing when the kids aren't, you know, in danger from being exposed? From the coves, we saw this. It was not about children. It's about adults a lot. And what I predict, and you're going to start seeing, seeing it even this year in state and local governments, the fight to keep education budgets high when there are less students to even teach. It's not going to. It's going to be about funding empty buildings that have adults in them and, and, and, and empty desks with adults in front of them. That is what it's going to be about. The teachers union right now, they are going to, in states where they are powerful, flex the ultimate political muscle to keep money flowing to empty schools. You are going to see it in blue state after blue state. And when they have to ultimately consolidate schools or close schools, the war over that is gonna be brutal because think of it also, many of these schools are in very expensive areas where that property's worth billions of dollars. Sometimes these city governments need money. New York City is absolutely need money. I talked to a city councilman who told me there are over 100 schools that are slated to have more than 500 students that have less than 100. And New York City has a near $6 billion budget deficit. They could sell those buildings to developers and consolidate those schools, and they could completely get rid of the deficit just by selling schools that no one's going to, but they won't. Because loyalty to the teachers union is more important than financial success. Sorry, financial success for the city and educational success for the student. It's not about that. It's about the teachers union. You're going to see that really play out very heavily over the, Especially the next decade, but even starting this year. Okay, that's my whole conversation, my little data nugget. I have an interview with Luke Rosiak from the Daily Wire. We're talking about a different thing. It's a, it's a pivot, but, but it's in the same subject, which is where taxpayer money is going to fraud. This is not education. Not the fraud part. It's about Misallocating money. This is about straight up fraud, especially in Ohio with Medicaid money. The interview is fascinating. That is coming up next. Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [18:23]
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Ryan Graduski
e.com underage sale prohibited views is a vapor product Website restricted to age 21 plus tobacco consumers. Copyright 2026 RJRVC.
- [18:46]
Public Investing Advertiser
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice. Complete disclosures available@public.com disclosures if you're feeling
- [19:48]
Inner Balance Advertiser
off fatigue, mood changes, skin shifts, yet your labs say everything's normal. You're not alone. Meet Oestra from Inner Balance, the first all in one prescription strength bioidentical hormone cream that's natural and effective and only takes one drop 10 seconds a day. Oester replaces five to six products women typically use to treat symptoms and is third party tested to ensure the highest quality. Visit innerbalance.com today to start feeling like yourself again. That's innerbalance.com your social media feed delivers
- [20:20]
VUSE Advertiser
plenty of advice, but it doesn't know you. It doesn't ask questions. It doesn't give physical exams or order tests doctors do. At the American Medical association, we believe the best care starts with a real conversation with someone who understands the science and your unique health. So stay curious. Ask questions. But when it's time to make decisions, make them with a doctor. Learn more@amahealthvshype.org that's amahealthvshipe.org thanks.
- [20:49]
Ryan Graduski
Luke Rosiak is an investigative journalist for the Daily Wire. Thanks for being here, Luke. Sure.
- [20:53]
Luke Rosiak
Thanks for having me, Ryan.
- [20:54]
Ryan Graduski
Now, Luke, you did a multi part investigation into Medicaid fraud involving. Involving, you know, primarily the Somali community in Ohio. First question is, what tipped you off about Ohio? It's not a place that people would usually think of when they think of, you know, mass Medicaid fraud.
- [21:10]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. You know, Doge and HHS released a database of Medicaid spending which we've never seen before. Like, it's such a huge portion of the federal budget. I think it's like a quarter of all federal spending. And yet we had no idea where any of it went. And so when this database came out, there's a couple codes that are especially prone to abuse. Stuff that's happening inside people's houses. It's hard to verify that it actually occurred. And then I ran a bunch of queries on the database to detect suspicious activity, and it basically took me right to Columbus, Ohio, northeast Columbus, Ohio. And I didn't really know anything about it at the time, but it turned out that that's the second biggest, biggest epicenter of Somalis in the country, too. So, like, weirdly enough, you know, there was this discussion of the Minnesota stuff. Is it cherry picked? Is that one off? Is it not Representative. I did find massive concerning Medicaid spending in the database. And yet again, it also tended to correlate with Somalis.
- [22:15]
Ryan Graduski
Okay. And so all right, now you've, you noted in your piece that Medicaid spending on home aid, it's called the home aid program in the Medicaid had doubled in five years to more than a billion dollars just out of Ohio. What, what is homemade? Because I didn't even know really what that was. What, what is that entire program?
- [22:37]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. So Medicaid was not really supposed to cover any of this stuff. And eventually they started giving out these waivers for home health care, which was if you're old and really sick, so sick that, you know, you could go to a nursing home and the government would have to pay like $100,000 to put you in a nursing home. They were like, we could actually save money if we just sent nurses to your house a couple of times a week and maybe that would only cost like 40 grand. So the taxpayers win. But then they kept expanding it and they changed it to, well, what if you don't really need nurses? What if you just send like regular people to clean and cook, basically do chores for you? And then they pushed it further and they said, well, what if the people helping you could be your own family members? And so it started as we'll save money because these people would be in a nursing home. But it turns out that not a lot of people will pretend to be sick to go get into a nursing home because it's not that, it's not that fun. A lot more people will claim to be have debilitating difficulty getting around and needing all this help when you actually just get to live your normal life and have your family members paid to literally hang out with you. So it doesn't save money at all because the number of people demanding assistance is massively higher than who would claim to be disabled if you actually had to go live in a nursing home when you got that doctor's note that says you're so debilitated that you need nursing home level care.
- [24:02]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah. And you know what was frustrating me is that my grandparents were very ill at one point and so was my great aunt. And my grand actually lived with me for a six month period of time. And I was with my grandparents like every day. And I did not even know that this was a possibility. Not that I would have taken advantage of it. But I wonder how that information of all these random government programs is so highly knowledgeable among certain pockets of immigrant communities to take advantage of this program or that program when I think that most Americans probably had never heard of them.
- [24:33]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. And remember, it's a Medicaid program. So that's for people that are poor and haven't really paid taxes. Medicare would be different. So these are people as well. And I found that are almost all, at least the providers are all from Africa, mostly Somalia. And so they're coming to our country as refugees and saying they'd escaped this horrible life where they had nothing. And now they're getting paid servants. I call them Somali butlers because they literally will clean, cook. And there's companies everywhere that advertise to sort of answer your question. There's middlemen. Companies like you wouldn't get paid by Medicaid directly to hang out with your aunt. Your Medicaid would pay a company that you would be an employee of. The company got it. And so the companies advertise on billboards. And a lot of the economy of Northeast Columbus has just gone away because people have would rather and find it more lucrative to start these middleman LLCs that manage a fleet of people that are just hanging out in their own house. And so there's like seven. One landlord owns seven buildings on this one street. They've got 300 home health care businesses inside of them which build a quarter billion dollars. That's just one landlord.
- [25:54]
Ryan Graduski
It's insane. So what is the scale? So I was going to ask you, what is the scale of the fraud? How large is it?
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Luke Rosiak
Well, it's interesting because in my opinion all of it is waste, or the vast majority of it is waste. I mean, we probably shouldn't be paying people to hang out with their own family. But there is a lot of fraud. The people who own these middlemen, companies, first of all, none of them, the vast majority of these offices were empty. And because of this data set, we can finally see like that weird office you see that nobody is ever at. And it's like, is this a money laundering front? What is this? Now you can look at them in this database and like, oh, that's what this is. They got $32 million from, from our money in Medicaid. And you can look up who started that LLC and you can see that they probably have tax debts. So they maybe get $100,000 a month in Medicaid payments. And they don't even pay their taxes to America. After getting all that money, of course, from taxpayers, they oftentimes have a second business or maybe this is their second business. It's basically, what do you call it, like a side hustle. Side hustle? Yeah, the old million dollar a year side hustle. And you know, sometimes criminal records and so definitely sketchy people running these things. The amount of LLCs is insane. Entire buildings full of them. And then at the end of the day, Medicaid is basically relying on the trustworthiness of these people to just fill out this form and be like, ye, I spent this, you know, my workers spent this amount of hours with these old ladies, so pay us money.
- [27:27]
Ryan Graduski
And there is no, the Medicaid doesn't do these checkups, like random checkups and say, okay, let me see, this person's actually bedbound or there's nothing like that.
- [27:35]
Luke Rosiak
Well, I think they, I mean it's clear that the measures that they have aren't working and they have built. And I'm going to get into this further as my, my series proceeds because we're only halfway through. But there are massive loopholes. And it also tends to, I think if you have a group of people working together, that's when you can really Exploit it. So you have doctors who are willing to say that everybody is disabled. You have a number of old ladies who are willing to go get those notes and then not really say anything when nobody comes to visit them. You have people who play the role of managing these LLCs. You can get a whole cartel going. But, you know, I mean, I did a story yesterday, and you can hear the audio of me even talking to these people. I put it on Twitter. Like, this guy has, like, he's a career criminal. He's got fraud, multiple fraud convictions, multiple theft convictions, endangering children, giving fake names to the police. And he says he disclosed all that to Medicaid. And they were like, yeah, that's fine. You can create a home health business. And so they paid him a hundred thousand dollars a month. And, you know, I asked him about on the phone, and he, like, threatened my family. Like, these are insane people. And the government says this is fine.
- [28:46]
Ryan Graduski
Well, it was a hundred thousand a month he was getting paid. Did he have a company with, like, loads of employees or it was just him?
- [28:52]
Luke Rosiak
Well, it said. I think on the database they had, like, 12. 12 patients. And so I don't know how many employees they had. His nursing license was actually rescinded for his massive criminal behavior. And then they kind of let him. They said, you can have it back probationary, but you can't do home health care and manage money. And then he's owning a company that does home health care and manages money. And I asked him about that, and he said, I don't work in home health care. I own home health care here.
- [29:17]
Ryan Graduski
Is this a job of the state government or the federal government to do these kinds of checkups and making sure these people don't fall through loopholes? Because I know that it's a federal program. The state does manage a lot of it.
- [29:28]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah, I mean, that's the key question here. There's misaligned incentives that have caused Medicaid fraud to become rampant because the feds pay. It was supposed to be, like, half, but it's more like 70%. It's a joint federal and state program, and it's. They split the duties in the worst way. The feds pay most of the money, but the states are in charge of implementing the policies and making sure there's no fraud. And so this is. All this stuff that you saw in Minnesota, except for the daycares, was these Medicaid waivers. And waivers are when you add on special programs that were never supposed to be part of Medicaid. And this is part of why I think Minnesota didn't really care that it's wasted because it's other people's money.
- [30:09]
Ryan Graduski
Right. And I would love to know. I mean, you can't, we can't find this out, but I would love to know how Somalia is one of the highest amounts of money given back to the country from people living here in now. The words slipping out of my mind, but they, they give enormous billions of dollars from the United States goes to Somalia every single year. I would love to find out if I could, but there's really no way of how much taxpayer dollars just go to Somalia because I'm sure it is its own, you know, fun in itself. So you have more of the series coming out. What else can viewers look forward to watching?
- [30:45]
Luke Rosiak
Well, I don't want to give away the game. I mean, stay tuned. Check out the Daily. Daily.
- [30:50]
Ryan Graduski
Well, you mentioned doctors, so I imagine that is something to do with the other parts of the infrastructure to keep these things going. Do I have that right?
- [30:59]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, we've seen how the sheer scale of it and how it seems to be wasteful. And we're going to see more about the case studies of just how sketchy these people are. In the meantime, there's been a couple things in the news this week elsewhere that kind of highlight how important Medicaid is, how prominent, how common Medicaid scams, if you want to say that are among certain factions of society. The Senate leader in Virginia, Luis Lucas, was raided by the FBI, and she has multiple Medicaid businesses that house intellectually disabled people. And she's just doing that on the side as she's a politician. And then Alpha News had a great story. The head of care, the Muslim group in Minnesota, he just like, casually has a bunch of, like, autistic people living in a foster home. And it's just like, kind of hard to believe, right?
- [31:50]
Ryan Graduski
That is. I mean, it is hard to believe, but it is, it is, it is hard to believe in. Some of you're like, you know, it's something that sticks in the back of your head. We're like, I can believe this is true. Has anyone from the government reached out to you after this came out and said, wow, you know, this is great reporting. We really should do something about this.
- [32:06]
Luke Rosiak
It's been a busy week. There's been a massive amount of response from politicians. Vice President Vance, who's of course from Ohio, has said, and he's deploying the task force against fraud that he's in charge of to Columbus to look into this. Vivek, who won the primary for the governor's election this week, tweeted about it yesterday, saying he's going to put an end to this. But one thing to note is voters and policymakers really need to consider whether we should just end these programs where we'll pay people to hang out with their families outright. It's become the biggest, the most common job in New York State. That's what scale this is going.
- [32:44]
Ryan Graduski
You know what's so funny? I see those advertisements all the time in New York. Whenever I'm in New York, I'm seeing advertisements constantly saying, stay home and take care of your loved ones. And I'm just like, that's kind of odd. But I kind of don't, I don't chalk it up to anything. And as you were saying, like, there are times when, and this is just generally through life, if you live in any area for a long enough period of time, especially densely pop area, you always see businesses where you're like, what did they do? How are they still open? There can't, I've never seen anyone walk inside of it. How is this business still functioning?
- [33:17]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah, and that's how sketchy these LLCs are with the home health care. I mean, one of them was founded using the address of the teenage son of a convicted money launderer by an accountant who had gotten his license taken away for stealing federal funds. So like, the whole thing is just like massive red flags. But then at the same time, the core of it, like, if you assume they actually are paying people to live with their, to hang out with their family and taking a cut, cut, that part is legal, but you look into who's doing it. Can you really trust them? And then you take a step back and you're like, well, there's so many of these people. Anti fraud investigators could play whack a mole, knocking them out one at a time and trying to get the money back. And maybe it's already overseas, but. Or do we just say we just can't pay people to hang out with their own family members, like we want them to. You know, if you have a family member who's older, like, help them out by all means, because it's the right thing to do. But, like, the government can't really get in the middle of like paying people by the hour for things that they do in their private residences.
- [34:13]
Ryan Graduski
How many people does it employ in New York State? Just if, you know, I, I, I
- [34:18]
Luke Rosiak
heard that like 30, like, when they talk about the economy like jobs growing, they'll be like, we're having a good economy. Like there's been an increase in jobs. Like 38% of those jobs are actually just people hanging out with their family. And so it is. There's. We should differentiate between home healthcare, which is typically nurses, and then what they call personal services, which is, you're not a medical professional. And I think that's the one that, that we probably need to get rid of. Like New York is spending $15 billion a year on it, but that's 70% of federal money. That's just too much money. Other states don't get to do that. We can't police the fraud. And I'm just really concerned with the government having any programs where if there is fraud, it's impossible to police because of the inherent vulnerabilities of the program. And I wonder involving residences, private homes. It's kind of like that.
- [35:08]
Ryan Graduski
I wonder what that scale is nationwide. If it's just. If It's. You said 15 billion in New York State, 70% is federal, that's $10 billion. I wonder what that scale is looking like nationwide, especially when we're constantly in an issue where we're running up massive deficits year in and year out. Wow, this is amazing. Infuriating, but amazing. Are you going to continue with other states you think, after this?
- [35:33]
Luke Rosiak
I want to keep a focus on Medicaid. I hope a lot of people do. Chris Rufo also did some good work on the home healthcare in California. It's crazy that I think a lot of maybe the wealthy liberal commentators, they just haven't even noticed this existed because it is happening in basically apartments across New York City behind closed doors and it's happening in the poorer areas of cities in certain states. But at the same time, I think Democrat politicians also knew that they were implementing essentially backdoor UBI and they never really told the public that. They just did it in this sleeper way through this medical program to kind of put this, this, well, this secret welfare program. And Republicans sometimes fall for that. They don't even realize like that's what this is, is. It's essentially just UBI for people that are willing to basically lie and exaggerate how much their 65 year old mom actually needs. Needs help at home.
- [36:29]
Ryan Graduski
Yeah. UBI is universal basic income, if anyone was curious. Okay, last question though. Has any Democrats reached out or commented publicly that you've seen about this? Because this is something Democrats should be really furious with too, if they want and protect the integrity of Medicaid.
- [36:44]
Luke Rosiak
Yeah. I haven't heard a single thing. And I really wish that people I wish I could take them to the buildings that I saw in Columbus, Ohio, because it was so sketchy. And it is true that it was 99% African. It wasn't really no Americans there. And it was just the kind of thing where you kind of knew this wouldn't be a good $32 million behind that door. And then you look up the person who's it's like you just know it can't be right. It's not a good expendit future of of money.
- [37:14]
Ryan Graduski
All right, Luke, where can we go to read more of your incredible work and where you're where they watch this incredible investigation?
- [37:21]
Luke Rosiak
Go to Daily Wire. It's called the Medicaid Million series. You can also check it out on Twitter at Luke Rosiak and we're gonna keep dropping stories over the next couple days.
- [37:30]
Ryan Graduski
Well, I really appreciate you coming on this podcast. Thanks, Luke.
- [37:32]
Luke Rosiak
Thank you.
- [37:33]
Ryan Graduski
Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
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Ryan Graduski
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- [40:07]
Ryan Graduski
the Ask Me Anything segment. If you want to be part of the Ask Me Anything segment, you know Ryan@NumbersGamePodcast.com that's Ryan plural numbers gamepodcast.com I actually am low in the docket, so if you want to email me, I will get your emails pretty quickly, probably during this week's episodes or or maybe early next week. But they will come soon. First question is from Kevin. Kevin writes with states gerrymandering congressional seats, what is possibility that in an effort to spread voters to from the wrong party they are unintentionally creating swing districts. Keep up the good work. So that is called a dummy mander. When districts are they they they create districts that are supposed to be safe Democratic seats and they or safe Republican seats and they swing and they accidentally become swing districts that happen in Georgia and the Atlanta suburbs. That's happened a number of other places. Here's the thing is this that with redistricting efforts getting more tactical it's becoming better in the sense that there that happens on a rarer and rarer case. So a perfect example is in Nevada. Nevada is I mean when we talk about gerrymandering Nevada always goes under the radar because they like to New England which by the way conservatives talk about New England is such like a waste of time because really even if we fought for redistricting efforts there may be four Republican seats, five may not probably four four Republican seats, one Maine, one In New Hampshire, one in Massachusetts and one in Connecticut. That's really all we would get out of, out of New England. But they, like, love talking about New England. Conservatives do. But Nevada in the 2020 census, remember, they had a Democratic legislator and a Democratic governor. They went to town cutting that state up seven ways from Sunday 2024. Republicans won the assembly, the Nevada assembly elections. That's the state legislature bite. Eight points. They got 53% of the vote despite winning overwhelmingly. They only received 36% of the seats. They only gained a net one seat despite winning this massive swing. If you look at the results from that year from those districts, there were five seats that Republicans only lost by 1, 2, 3 points. They were drawn as Democrat plus 10 seats. And then there was this dramatic swing with young voters and Latinos for Trump and for Republicans, Republicans. But nonetheless, Democrats were able to keep that huge majority despite only losing one seat because they had cut all those seats to be super safe Democratic seats. Are they swing districts? Kind of. If you only win a seat, a seat by one point, it's a swing district. But they should have been swing districts that reflected the state swing and they weren't. They were so protective because of how aggressive the gerrymander is. Same thing in Illinois. You really can't win any. Republicans can't really win any congressional seats out of Illinois, even with massive swings, because they're drawn so tactically. And that's what would have happened in Virginia. We didn't talk about this on the episode because it happened during, later in the half of the week. But when the Virginia State Supreme Court, which I was talking about, that could happen when they struck down their map, the map that the governor had, that the state Senate had drawn, that the governor had approved, that would have been a state that, a map that like, you know, Republicans could maybe win one extra seat out of. But they drew it so aggressively, I don't think they could have ever won more than two seats. It would have been 10, one the entire decade. And State Senator Lucas, the, the, the, she's the, I think the Senate or Senate second in control of the Senate. She was the one who fought the hardest for it. And she was, she was, she's the one who got investigated by the federal government. Now, she, she was just so confident that she made easy mistakes, mistakes that had she not made. It was all over date filing. Like the reason that the map was struck down was the dates were filed incorrectly and they weren't filing correctly. There was, they were supposed to be done within a certain time period. And they just weren't. Had she been more patient and she waited, she would have gotten her 101 map. And now of course, the Virginia Democrats are like, we're going to lower, lower the. They're gonna lower the retirement age for the state supreme court justices From I think 70 to 53 so they could retire all members of the state supreme court, appoint seven new members, and then fight for the same redistricting map, which they would have to then go to another vote. These people have lost their mind. They just lost their minds. The current map in Virginia is actually very, very, very fair. Very fair. And even though Democrats are. Have more seats than Republicans, it's drawn in a very fair way. Okay, next question comes from Trevor. Trevor says, hey, Ryan, you should totally run for that Louisiana house Sleep. Your slogan could be I hope your beeper doesn't go off. Very funny. Thanks, Trevor. I don't think I'm gonna, I, I know I'm not gonna run, but thank you, Trevor. I was gonna mention that in my last email, but forgot. You should talk about the Barbara Jordan Commission and how Bill Clinton probably would have signed off on an immigration rejection bill. That one ended up on his desk, but Republicans blocked it. I should do an episode on that because it is a piece of recent political history that people don't even know how Democrats really were going for a massive immigration reduction in the 90s. And it was Republicans that screwed the entire thing up. They really screwed the whole pooch. My question today is about the future of the black vote. As we get further and further away from the civil rights movement and the prominence that we rights fights figures and the black community begin to die off. Do you think it's possible the Democrat party's stranglehold on the black vote may finally start to slip? Don't get me wrong, I'm not under no illusion that Republicans are going to start winning them. Winning the black vote. If we could get anywhere from pre civil rights numbers, 25 to 35% of the black vote voting Republican, it would change the political landscape. What do you think? That's a great question. It's one. Listen. There's definitely movement among young black men, men more than there ever has been because the Democratic party to them doesn't speak to them. I mean, the Democratic Party is very white, not, not the, not the voting population, but the, the governing class. And they're white in the sense that they are like a caricature of white people, but they're white progressive women and they believe things like transing kids and you know, being very. It's very gender fluid, very Damascus emasculating. It's very. The future is fe. And it speaks a lot for black women. Black women are super loyal Democratic voters. I don't think the black female votes really going anywhere anytime soon. Well, black men, could we get to young Black men voting 20% Republican? I wouldn't be shocked. But remember, they vote at such low numbers that we would have to wait two decades out for seeing a. That reflected in the polls. So Maybe in the 2000-40s, possibly. I don't know. One of the big trends, there's several trends within the black community that people are not realizing. One is the declining birth rate in black communities, which I've talked about, which shows, you know, change in single mother, single mother households. A lot of them who are getting married, are marrying as couples more than they have been in the 90s, let's say there's also a decline and rising college admissions among black women. There's also a declining religiosity in the black community. Black churches have emptied out or they've aged out rather. They're much grayer than they used to be. So efforts like souls to the polls, which was the massive effort to get black people to go vote in elections, that's not as effective as it used to be at all. It's not even nearly as effective as it used to be. And I could see that being a political trend that really goes and dies over the course of the next two decades or it becomes like a ceremonial thing, like we do it, but it doesn't really serve the purpose that it used to serve, which was to win elections. They just, just. They don't go to church in large numbers anymore. Young black people. Those churches are definitely emptying out. So I think we're going to see some changes in the black voting structure, especially black turnout. Overall black turnout as far as a percentage of the numbers that used to hit are not what they were in the aughts when Obama was president. They're not even close to that. I mean, I think there's an overall decline in general black turnout and it's an apathy towards politics post Obama, which why is that? I don't know. I'd have to get an expert on the show to talk about. But it is something that's there. It's something that's true. Okay, last question for is from Robbie. Robbie says. This is Robbie from North Carolina. Thank you for your insights. In the North Carolina governor's race, it's obvious that Kamala's book tour that she's really planning to run for president in 2028. I agree. If Kamala is the nominee in 2020, can the top three Republicans beat her as handily as Trump did? Given the opportunity to campaign longer, I feel like it would hurt her even worse because they couldn't sequester her or hide her away like they did with Joe in the last two years and her brief candidacy. Okay, here's the thing. Kamala has always been a weak candidate. I don't know if she'll be the Democratic nominee. Black voters do like her and black voters in the south matter a lot for the Democratic Party. But she's a weak candidate. She's always been a weak candidate. She ran for attorney general in California the first time and she was fighting. She was against the. I think he was the Republican, Republican D A from la, if I believe correctly, top of my head. And she only won by one point. Had the Constitution Party and the Libertarian Party not put up their own candidates, she would have lost to a Republican in California. And that was in 2010. I don't know. I don't know if she'd be the nominee because she is such a bad performing candidate. And here's the thing about Kamala. I don't think she's a genuinely unlikable person person. I think that she's an incredibly phony person. I think that she's an incredibly a person who's. Her. Her being uncomfortable in her skin is so evident and so obvious. She's not like Bill Clinton. She's not like Barack Obama. She's not like other Democrats. Even losing Democrats who were just much easier going. She's. She. I. Maybe it's a female thing when women try to run for president. You have to be so many things to so many people. And I think that she is. She just comes off as unlikable. And here's the problem with Kamala running from a Democrat. I'm not a Democratic strategist or a Democrat in general, but this is what the problem would have to be. Go. The last time we had a candidate who ran for president as a really change candidate was 2016. And before that was 2008. We've had had almost two. By 2028, we'll have two decades of only one change candidate running. Joe Biden was a legacy act. Trump has been the nominee three times. I guess you go back to 2016 when he first ran. He was a legitimate change candidate. And before that you have Barack Obama and then he was the incumbent so you haven't had a change candidate in quite some time. And I think voters do want a change candidate. And if you have somebody who's from, from the Trump administration versus somebody from the Biden administration, then we're just doing ancient history again. We're doing the whole we know everybody here. Who is, who are we the most comfortable with or who is the one who is the least bad option. From our collective memories. I think that's how voters are going to go through the election. Feeling and understanding. I don't know. I just, I think Kamala would have, would struggle. I really think do. I do think that she's going to struggle as a candidate because she has to hold the whole, the whole Biden administration together. She is personally pretty progressive and she's done this whole I'm 45 different versions of a person. I'm. I'm Kamala the cop. I'm Kamala the prosecutor. No, I'm Kamala the liberal. I'm Kamala the vice president. Kamala the girl boss. It's all kind of cringe. It's all kind of weird. I will say this though. I will predict if she is the Democratic nominee, she is not picking Tim Waltz again to be her view that I am surely predicting the communist version of Fred Mertz did not work out for the Democratic Party. Okay guys, that's this episode. I thank you all so much. If you like this podcast, please like and subscribe to the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast. Wherever you get this podcast and on YouTube, please like and subscribe on YouTube. I appreciate you all. Happy Monday. See you guys on Wednesday. Warning this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.
- [52:56]
VUSE Advertiser
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- [53:13]
Ryan Graduski
underage sale prohibited views is a vapor product website restricted to age 21 plus tobacco consumers. Copyright 2026 RJRBC.
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Ryan Graduski
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Ryan Graduski
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