A group of Republican and DFL lawmakers want a comprehensive audit of 14 state programs released to their committees. However, that report is held by the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), which has reportedly failed to provide it.
Late last year, Gov. Tim Walz announced that Minnesota had partnered with Optum, a private healthcare company, to conduct an audit of 14 state-run, Medicaid-funded welfare programs that were deemed at “high-risk” for fraudulent activity.
Those 14 programs, one of which has since been shuttered due to fraud, are at the center of Minnesota’s unfolding fraud saga. According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Minnesota, more than $9 billion could have been stolen from those programs since 2018.
In January, Optum’s completed audit was turned over to DHS, the state agency that runs the 14 “high-risk” programs.
The report identified $52 million of payments that could be recovered by the state and estimated that “potential recoveries” amount to more than $1 billion over a nearly four-year period. However, the report released to the public by DHS was heavily-redacted.
According to DHS, those redactions were made to protect trade secrets and avoid giving fraudsters inside information on how to target state programs. However, Republicans were critical of the redactions and authored a bill to make the unredacted report public.
While the unredacted report was not released, two steps were taken to potentially shed more light on Optum’s audit. In February, the Office of the Legislative Auditor (OLA) was directed to review the report and summarize its findings and recommendations.
That OLA summary was released last week.
According to the OLA, Optum’s report found “overly broad, vague, or undefined eligibility criteria” for several of the programs, “services provided prior to completing required assessments,” and “ambiguous coding or underspecified billing policies.”
In turn, the OLA shared summaries of Optum’s recommendations to remedy these issues and made recommendations itself. Those suggestions included clarifying policies, supporting DHS’ “program integrity office,” and revising billing policies “to align with industry best practices.”
However, the OLA summary is not the only way to learn more about Optum’s report.
In May, a state law was passed allowing the Optum report to be released, mostly unredacted, to legislative committees that oversee state human services policy. The only redactions that would remain are “redactions requested by Optum to protect proprietary information.”
According to that state law, the report can only be released to committee members if both the chair and ranking member of that committee request the report. Members and staff of those committees would not be allowed to publicize non-public data found in the report.
The Minnesota Senate’s Human Services Committee is chaired by DFL Sen. John Hoffman while Republican Sen. Jordan Rasmusson serves as ranking member. Rasmusson released a statement on Monday which advocated for the Optum report to be released to the committee.
“Democrats should join my request to release the full report to committee members and hold a hearing to review the recommendations put forward,” Rasmusson said.
Meanwhile, Hoffman put out a joint statement on Monday with DFL state Rep. Mohamud Noor, the co-chair of the Minnesota House of Representatives’ Human Services Committee.
That joint statement said Noor and GOP Rep. Joe Schomacker requested the Optum report back in May, “but we have yet to receive the unredacted report. We are now renewing that request to DHS and hope they will fulfill it promptly.”
Schomacker was the Republican co-chair of the House Human Services Committee before his resignation this year. The current GOP co-chair of the committee is Rep. Dawn Gillman.
Earlier today, Gillman told Alpha News, “I would like to have the Optum reports released to the Human Services Committee and I did send a formal request to the commissioner this morning asking him to do so.”
Gilman also put out a press release Tuesday afternoon which said, “We requested the unredacted Optum report back in May, and it is absolutely unacceptable that nearly five months later the commissioner still has not given us access.”
Alpha News contacted DHS about its alleged failure to provide the House Human Services Committee with the Optum report in accordance with its May request. The agency was also asked if it would make the report available.
“We appreciate legislators’ interest in receiving a copy of the unredacted initial Optum report from February 2026,” a DHS spokesperson told Alpha News in a statement.
“In accordance with state law, which authorizes [DHS] to release this nonpublic data upon a joint request by the chairs and ranking minority members of legislative human services committees, we are working with members to release the reports to them,” the spokesperson added.
Luke Sprinkel
Luke Sprinkel previously worked as a Legislative Assistant at the Minnesota House of Representatives. He grew up as a Missionary Kid (MK) living in England, Thailand, Tanzania, and the Middle East. Luke graduated from Regent University in 2018.
