Medicaid: Improved Oversight Needed of State Eligibility Error Corrective Action Plans

The Government Accountability Office reviewed how CMS handles state corrective action plans meant to fix Medicaid eligibility errors, the kind that lead to improper payments. Caseworkers were the most common root cause of errors identified in the reports GAO reviewed between 2019 and 2025.

States submit these corrective plans and CMS is supposed to review them, but GAO found CMS has accepted plans missing required information and does not systematically compare plans across states or years to spot patterns. In other words, the agency responsible for reducing an improper-payment rate that has recently started climbing again isn't doing basic pattern recognition on its own oversight files.

GAO recommended CMS make sure plans include all required elements and start analyzing errors and corrective actions across states and years. CMS agreed with the second recommendation but pushed back on the first, insisting its routine process is already sufficient, an assertion GAO rejects given the incomplete plans it says CMS has been accepting.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.