The U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Government Reform is set to host three hearings on issues that have been ongoing priorities for the Trump administration. The first hearing will focus on Medicare fraud involving skin-substitute spending, which has seen a significant increase in recent years.
Medicare Fraud
GOP-led congressional committees have held numerous hearings on fraud during the second Trump administration, especially since the roughly $9 billion of fraud, waste, and abuse in Minnesota Medicaid and other government assistance programs came to light. The administration has created several task forces on fraud, including the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which President Donald Trump commissioned in March via executive order as an inter-departmental team leading a government-wide approach to combat fraud in federal benefits programs.
The Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General issued a report titled “Medicare Part B Payment Trends for Skin Substitutes Raise Major Concerns About Fraud, Waste, and Abuse.” The report found that Part B expenditures for skin substitutes provided in non-institutional settings have skyrocketed over the last two years, surpassing $10 billion annually by the end of 2024.
Smithsonian Presentations of History
Earlier on Tuesday, the Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency will hold a hearing on the Smithsonian’s efforts to reshape the past through rewriting American history. Early in Trump’s second term, he issued an executive order titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” in which he directed Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents, to work to eliminate improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology from the Smithsonian and its museums, education and research centers, and the National Zoo.
DEI in the Legal Profession
The committee’s final hearing of the week will focus on “The Future of DEI in Law School Accreditation and the Legal Profession.” Within the first 100 days of his second term, Trump issued multiple executive orders attempting to root out diversity, equity, and inclusion policies within the federal government and challenge them in the private sector.
Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.