The Highest-Paid Individual Medicaid Providers
Everyone assumes Medicaid fraud is about greedy doctors. The data tells a very different story: only 2 individual people appear in the top 2,000 Medicaid billers. The rest are all organizations.
2
individual people in the top 2,000
Almost all top Medicaid billing is by organizations — hospital systems, home care agencies, managed care companies. Not individual doctors.
Non-emergency Medical Transport (VAN)
Ft Wingate, NM
Total Paid
$76.2M
Claims
695K
Patients
57K
Eric Lund — $77.3 million
A clinical psychologist in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Lund billed $77.3M to Medicaid across 1.1M claims serving 73K beneficiaries. That averages to roughly $1,054 per beneficiary — but the sheer volume of claims for a single practitioner is extraordinary.
Loren Cooke — $76.2 million
A non-emergency medical transport provider in Fort Wingate, New Mexico. Cooke billed $76.2M for transporting Medicaid patients. Fort Wingate is near the Navajo Nation — suggesting this transportation service covers vast rural distances in tribal areas where medical facilities are far apart.
Why this matters: The popular narrative around Medicaid fraud often focuses on individual doctors gaming the system. But the data reveals that the real money flows through large organizations — home care agencies, hospital systems, managed care companies, and government entities. The top 2,000 Medicaid billers are almost exclusively organizations, with only these two individuals breaking through.
This doesn't mean individual fraud doesn't happen — it does, frequently, at lower dollar amounts. But it reframes where the biggest financial risks lie: in organizational billing practices, not individual doctor greed.
Individuals vs. Organizations
The top organization billed 93x more than the top individual.
Key Takeaways
- ▸Only 2 out of 2,000 top Medicaid billers are individual people. The rest are organizations.
- ▸This challenges the "rich doctors gaming Medicaid" narrative. The real money flows through large organizational billing.
- ▸The top organization (Public Partnerships LLC) billed 93x more than the top individual.
- ▸Loren Cooke's $76.2M in transport billing from Fort Wingate, NM highlights the costs of rural/tribal healthcare access.
Source: HHS Medicaid Provider Spending Data (2018–2024) · 227M records
Frequently Asked Questions
Are Medicaid's top billers actually doctors?
No — only 2 of the top 2,000 Medicaid billers are individual humans. The vast majority are organizations like managed care entities, pharmacy chains, and billing intermediaries.
Who are the two individual top Medicaid billers?
A psychologist who billed $77.3 million and a non-emergency medical transport van driver who billed $76.2 million — both extreme outliers among a sea of organizational billers.
How can a van driver bill $76 million to Medicaid?
Non-emergency medical transportation (NEMT) is a Medicaid benefit that can generate high volumes of claims. Whether $76 million from one individual represents legitimate transport services is a question worth investigating.