Transcript

You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run

From Matt Walsh · Episode page · Watch on YouTube

· 26 min · 4,615 words · 45 timestamped sections

This is the full, timestamped transcript of "You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run", an episode of Matt Walsh published January 11, 2026 (26 min, about 4,615 words). It mentions 4 people, works and ideas, including Blue Cross, Feeding Our Future, Child Care Wayfinder, Karen Bratland.

What this episode is about

The content explores allegations of widespread Medicare fraud involving a significant Somali community in Minnesota, suggesting that fraud is being encouraged by organizations like Blue Cross, which are purportedly promoting the establishment of daycare services. The discussion also touches on controversial views regarding the intelligence levels within the Somali population, connecting these to broader societal issues and questioning the validity of arguments against IQ assessments in the context of Somalia's challenges.

Key takeaways

  • Despite being labeled 'low IQ,' the scams suggest savvy assistance behind the scenes; fraud thrives on collaboration.
  • Blue Cross' promotional materials raise eyebrows—are they inadvertently endorsing a 'get rich quick' daycare scheme?
  • Defining intelligence through a narrow lens risks overlooking systemic issues; context matters more than raw data.
  • Political culpability runs deep; inaction from local leaders raises questions about complicity and accountability.
  • Fraud's success often lies in exploiting bureaucratic labyrinths, not just individual intellect; the system fails miserably.

Who speaks in this episode?

What is discussed, and when

  1. – 5:00: Blue Cross
  2. – 10:00: Blue Cross
  3. – 15:00: Blue Cross, Feeding Our Future, Child Care Wayfinder, Karen Bratland

Notable quotes from "You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run"

  • Blue Cross comes along, makes videos, some of which are in the Somali language, saying, Hey guys, set up more of these daycarees.
    about Blue Cross · at
  • And daycarees again are ground zero for Somali fraud. That's where they ran the feeding our future scam from. They said children were coming to the daycarees and getting meals…
    about Feeding Our Future · at
  • It. The state leadership initiative brought this video to my attention. It's from an organization called Child Care Wayfinder in Minnesota, which receives millions of dollars…
    about Child Care Wayfinder · at

Who and what is mentioned in this episode?

People

  • Karen Bratland — Person · 1 mention · first at
    My name is Karen Bratland. I'm the childcare startup and retention coordinator with Childcare Wayfinder for 360 communities. Wayfinder navigators are available to accompany you through.

Companies & orgs

Concepts & topics

Full transcript with timestamps

all this obvious fraud was going on. Blue Cross comes along, makes videos, some of which are in the Somali language, saying, "Hey guys, set up more of these daycarees." Kind of thing that you should really investigate. Now, usually I don't feel any desire really to play devil's advocate. I have no interest in looking for ways just for the sake of argument to defend bad people or bad ideas. That's not to say that it's wrong to play devil's advocate or that people shouldn't do it. Generally though, it's it's not my style. I prefer to be as direct as possible. And for example, if a certain group of people, say Somali in Minnesota, are being dragged online by hundreds of millions of people, I feel no desire whatsoever to step in and ask an annoying contrarian question such as, "Hey, what if these people actually aren't so bad?" Now, all that said, at this point, I feel compelled to say one thing, just one thing that could be

considered something of a defense of the hundreds of thousands of Somali who are currently living in Minnesota and defrauding the American taxpayer. Now, you see, during yesterday's show, I pointed out that the average Somali has an IQ that approaches the level of mental retardation, in part because of rampant inbreeding that affects roughly half of the population. It's not a talking point. It happens to be true that the typical Somali has an IQ below 70. Now, on the left, they'll claim that the IQ analysis is illegitimate because Somalia is a war torn hellscape where everybody is malnourished, so you can't possibly administer a valid IQ test for some reason. But they'll never explain why. When you look at the state of Somalia, well, it looks an awful lot like a country run by people with an average IQ of 68. They don't have a functioning economy or system of government or anything that would indicate that

they're capable of establishing or maintaining any kind of civilization. So what explains all of that if not for IQ? Is it climate change, white supremacy? No one knows. In any event, I'm I'm not here to play devil's advocate on that particular question. The science is settled on the issue of Somali IQ. But I do think it's it's worth asking an important follow-up which naturally follows from our previous discussion. And that follow-up question is this. If the typical Somali is indeed very dumb, then how exactly were they able to scam taxpayers out of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota alone? Now, sure, their fraud schemes weren't exactly subtle. They spelled learning center as learing center. They went slack jawed when a YouTuber with an iPhone knocked on their front door. Uh they had no kids inside their daycarees at all. And then when CNN shows up the next day, suddenly they had some woman standing out front

insisting that indeed she does send her children to the daycare every day from 2 to 10 p.m. which just so happens to be the precise operating hours of the daycare. But none of this is particularly indicative of of high IQs in the community. But at the same time, if their IQ is really hovering around 68, you you'd think they wouldn't even get that far. I mean, when your IQ is that low, you're not just putting up signs with obvious typos for your fraudulent business. That's more of a, you know, 80 to 85 IQ mistake. At 68 IQ, you're barely able to comprehend the idea of a business at all. I mean, at that rung of the IQ spectrum, you hear about laundering money and you throw your cash into the washing machine. You hear about the importance of headhunting and you go and literally scalp your competition and you certainly aren't navigating the bureaucracy of the state of Minnesota and filing lengthy forms or anything

like that. So, who exactly helped the Somali? That's the question. We know they didn't commit all this fraud on their own, which is the best defense I can muster for these people. And it requires us to figure out where did the help come from. Now, we know Democrats from Tim Walls on down were complicit in the fraud. They understood that they were getting scammed. Uh the budgets alone made that obvious and they did nothing to stop it. That still doesn't address the the the question of who specifically held the hands of these Somali as they set up these fraudulent businesses. We know about a lot of people in government who knew that it was happening and allowed it to happen.

But who were the people that help that facilitated that that helped them do it? Well, to figure out who did hold their hands, I went looking through various online resources for citizens of Minnesota who want to start their own daycare. And as it turns out, uh, Blue Cross, which administers Medicaid in Minnesota, put out a video to that effect around 4 years ago. And here's a portion of the video from a a foundation established by Blue Cross. And see if you notice anything unusual. Watch. for

Oh, sorry. We uh played the Somali language version of the video that Blue Cross uploaded. So, that's our mistake. But, but here's the English language version, which they also provided, helpfully enough. And again, uh see what you notice. Let's watch. Are you thinking of opening a family child care business here in Minnesota and would like to get information? If so, you came to the right place. We hope these videos will help answer some of the questions you may have and help you understand the process of family child care licensing in Minnesota and learn about the regulations required to run a family child care business.

What is family child care? Family child care is a care provided in a caregivers's home where no more than 10 children are cared for at any one time of which no more than six of those children are under school age. Why become a licensed family child care provider? Opening a family child care can be a very rewarding career and comes with many benefits. You are opening your house to children while you are caring for your own children. Somali parents and guardians believe in keeping Somali culture and religion alive and embedded in child learning. Parents and guardians expect that their child will receive quality care and stay in a safe and clean environment while reaching learning milestones.

You, as a family child care provider, are in a unique position to provide quality child care and protect the health and safety of children in your care while at the same time keeping parents values and cultural beliefs intact. While the process may seem overwhelming, remember that your county licenser will work with you in more detail in each part of the process and help you apply this information to your situation. Now, in case you're listening to the audio podcast, I I need to point out that there is not a single white person in the entire video that Blue Cross put out. Uh, the closest we get to a white person is the woman at the end who works as county licenser who will help the Somali get their daycare so they can preserve their culture and their community. Now, all this is very strange if you think about it for a second. There's no obvious reason why Blue Cross, which is a health insurance

company that manages Medicaid claims in Minnesota, would put out an instructional video specifically for Somali who want to start daycarees for other Somali and no one else. I mean, there's no apparent reason why they'd want daycarees to be established that exclude white children. There's no reason why they'd want to preserve Somali culture and only Somali culture. That's their goal based on this video. And there are no other videos like this on Blue Cross's nonprofit YouTube account. They went out of their way to target Somali specifically and encourage them to start daycares even though like most of these people aren't working. They're on welfare. So why do they even need so many daycarees?

It's like you're not going to a job. But even so, they they went out of their way to make these videos specifically encouraging Somali personally to go start daycarees. There's no video uh about white daycarees that will preserve white culture, as you might imagine. But there's also no videos about Hispanic daycarees or, you know, black daycarees, Asian daycarees. They're all about Somali and only Somali. So, so what's going on here? Why is Blue Cross so passionate about the establishment of non-white all Somali daycarees in Minnesota? Now, if you're the optimistic type, you might say, well, you know, they want to ensure that a low-income, low-iq immigrant population is aware of their options when it comes to establishing daycarees and healthcare clinics. Blue Cross may simply be trying to help the Somali out. But if that's the case, you have to ask, did Blue Cross notice when Somali began

defrauding Medicaid on a massive scale? Did they notice that in many cases this Medicaid fraud involved daycarees which received money under Medicaid when they treated patients with alleged disabilities like autism? Why did it take Chris Rufo to tell us that Medicaid claims for autism in Minnesota somehow increase from $3 million to nearly $400 million in just a few years? Why did it take a YouTuber to point out that many of the daycarees are empty? Did Blue Cross not notice any of this? Why didn't they blow the whistle on the obvious fraud, which presumably they would have noticed very quickly since they were processing many of the claims?

Why instead did did they put out a video encouraging Somali to set up even more daycarees? Well, here's one theory, and it relates to how insurers like Blue Cross, which help manage Medicaid claims, get paid. Now, these are hypothetical numbers to illustrate the point. So, let's say that there's no fraud at all and Blue Cross pays autism treatment providers $100 million per year on claims for autism therapy, adult daycarees, home health services, and so on. The state of Minnesota would then reimburse Blue Cross $100 million via Medicaid, plus give them a 15% bonus for profit as well as administrative expenses. After all, Blue Cross isn't going to process the claims for free. They need some incentive. So 15% of 100 million amounts to $15 million in profit for Blue Cross in that scenario. Well, now imagine that there's $300 million in Medicaid expenses build to Blue Cross. $200 million of which are from Somali

fraudsters. Well, that means the total pie has now expanded significantly. 15% of 300 million is $45 million in profit for Blue Cross. And in future years, Blue Cross will command a higher rate from the state for handling more claims. So you see where this is going. You can make the argument that more fraud means more money for Blue Cross in the long term as long as their fraud is, you know, that fraud is coming from Medicaid claims, which they'll be reimbursed for. And daycarees again are ground zero for Somali fraud. That's where they ran the feeding our future scam from. They said children were coming to the daycarees and getting meals when they weren't. And many of these fraudulent autism services are also organized through daycarees.

Keep in mind there's this the convenient thing about autism is that there's no blood test. There's really no clear diagnostic criteria whatsoever. So if you're looking for a way to, you know, a type of disability to claim fraudulently, autism is a really good one. the S Somali could simply declare that children had autism and bam, the money started flowing. That's exactly what they did. So, with this in mind, is it possible that Blue Cross uh was not encouraging Somali to set up race-based daycarees out of the goodness of their own hearts?

Maybe they were doing it because, like everyone else in Minnesota, they were in on the scam. You hate to think that might be a possibility, but it's it's the kind of thing that's clearly worth investigating. all this obvious fraud was going on. Blue Cross comes along and makes videos, some of which are in the Somali language, saying, "Hey guys, set up more of these dayc carees." Kind of thing that you should really investigate. Now, at a minimum, they're not paying much attention to the programs they're involved with, even as insurance claims grow exponentially. But whatever the case, they're not the only ones doing it. The uh state leadership initiative brought this video to my attention. It's from an organization called Child Care Wayfinder in Minnesota, which receives millions of dollars from the state in order to help Somali's establish daycarees. They don't simply help the Somali file the forms. They also fund

the daycarees directly. Watch. My name is Karen Bratland. I'm the childcare startup and retention coordinator with Childcare Wayfinder for 360 communities. Wayfinder navigators are available to accompany you through the licensing process. I received a inquiry email from some individuals who were looking to start a Somali monastery school in Abu Valley.

A founder and Karen come along. I mean it was great. I mean we we we had a new partner in in in in our area. We have me and my wife opened Akasia Matasori specifically for the Somali parents in in in in the Apoali area.

This funding is one of the most significant hurdles that most of my participants have had. Opening from the ground up can be very expensive. Wayfinder navigators assist participants to find access to funding, professional development resources such as marketing, tax accountants, and much much more. When I first entered AASIA, I noticed that it had been a previous center.

So this is the point. It's not enough to go after the Somali daycarees themselves. Okay? Yeah, you go after them, but that's just the beginning, right? The tip of the iceberg. You have to look at who funded them, who helped to create them, and what were their incentives? And you need to determine what they knew about the legitimacy of the businesses that they were establishing. Now, I'm not saying that this particular NGO is fraudulent. I don't know one way or another, but in general, when you have armies of NOS's flushed with millions of taxpayer dollars, all setting up Somali daycarees, many of which are indeed obviously fraudulent, then at some point you need to start raiding the NOS's and conducting some investigations into what they knew or did not know. Just the other day, we learned that Amy Bach, the white woman who helped organize the massive feeding our future scam for the Somali, was also listed at at the as the

point of contact for 47 daycare centers in Minnesota. Now, Amy Bach was the ultimate middleman for Somali entrepreneurs, all of whom, strangely enough, wanted to start daycarees. As a nonprofit director, she helped an awful lot of Somali make an awful lot of profit. And then when she was busted for a fraud scheme to the tunes of tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, the daycarees dropped her. Now, how many other Amy Bach are out there? We should really find out. In other words, we can't pretend that Somali are the only ones scamming us with fake claims of autism and other disabilities.

Yes, it is righteous to arrest and deport every single one of these people, which we should. Yes, Somali are committing horrific crimes. Yes, their average IQ is extremely low. Uh, yes, they should not be in this country in the first place. But it's also true that this goes much deeper and it's a much wider problem. Americans are also committing an awful lot of fraud. In some cases, they're helping Somali while lining their own pockets. And many other cases, they're simply helping themselves. So, take for example the curious case of Graham Platner, who's uh running for the Democrat party's nomination for US Senate in Maine. And Platner is best known as the guy uh with the Nazi tattoo who supposedly didn't realize it was a Nazi tattoo. But what's interesting about Platner is not the tattoo.

What's interesting about him is that as of now he has a disability rating of 100% from the Department of Veterans Affairs, which stems from his deployment to Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, publicly, PLER has said that these benefits amount to roughly $5,000 a month or about 60 grand a year. Now, now, now wait a minute. You might say, 100% disability. How can someone who is 100% disabled to the point that they receive a substantial amount of cash every year from the taxpayer possibly serve as a US senator? Like, what does the word what does the term 100% mean?

Cuz when I hear that, I think, oh, totally disabled. Like, you are not able to do anything and yet you can serve as a US senator, which on second thought, given the quality of our uh politicians, maybe is not so hard to believe. But for that matter, he also continues to work as an oyster farmer and harbor master. Well, how does he do that if he's 100% disabled? He's 100% disabled. He's got a full-time job. He's 100% disabled. He's got a full-time job and he's running for Senate. 100% disabled. Now, in response, you might point out that under our current laws, it's possible to receive 60,000 a year with 100% disability while also working full-time in an extremely demanding job and obviously not being 100% disabled.

And that's probably true. I'm not an expert in disability law, but I can say with absolute confidence that it should not be true. If you're capable of becoming a US senator and if you're capable of working on a boat for a living, then you are not 100% disabled and you don't need $60,000 from the taxpayer on account of your disability. Period. Okay? It doesn't matter if you're a veteran, doesn't matter if you're a good person or a bad person. This is just a matter of common sense. It's a matter of like words mean things. 100% disabled means you shouldn't be working on a boat every day.

But Graham Platner, of course, is just one example of a much much larger trend. Disability fraud in this country is rampant and it's extremely expensive, particularly when it comes to the to the VA. Something like 7% of our taxes go to VA benefits. Um, and you have to wonder how much of that is unnecessary spending on men like Graham Platner. How much money are we spending to sending to fraudsters at the VA instead of actual American service members who could use the money for their own legitimate medical care? because there are plenty of those people too.

Now, admittedly, from a political perspective, it's not as easy to go after fraudsters in the VA compared to say Somali in Minnesota who can't even speak English, but it's arguably a lot more important to do so, especially since it's a a more common and more expensive problem. And again, it's wasting resources that should be used to treat and assist veterans who actually need it. But apparently the VA basically operates on an honor system where if you say you're disabled, the money just starts flowing. Watch.

How are you making money? Oh, I'm a VA disability with dependence. We have two kids,

right? Okay. 4,700 twice a month. No, I make 4,700 once a month and he makes 3,600 twice a month and it equals between 11 and 12.

Are you going to get disability, too? Oh, yes, I will. There is not a single veteran that has come on the show that does not just get endless money for the rest of their life with disabilities. It breaks your body. It really does. I'm old. I've done a lot. I'm a police officer for the Navy. So, I've done a lot of hardworking stuff throughout the throughout the time which I'm just I got issues all around. Um

but even people that just served for like 3 years and they just sat on a base they get it. Like there has not been one single person on this entire show that doesn't get thousands of dollars for the rest of their life. I think it's like 5% of our budget now. It's something.

It's something crazy. This is disability is forever. Well, they serve their country and they probably have earned it.

It's disability. Yeah, I get that. But there's things that when you serve your country and you break your body or you can't

I totally agree. I'm saying every single person that has ever been on this show who has literally just sat at a base and did nothing.

And I I know a lot of them. Yes. They will be able to claim some stuff. Yes. I'm not saying if you go get hurt or anything like I think that's why it's there right?

Yes. Right. That's what it's intended for. That's what it's intended for, but okay.

Now, zoom out beyond the VA and the hundreds of billions of dollars we spend there and the problem becomes substantially worse. So, here's a trivia question for you. How many food stamp recipients, if you had to guess, don't have any children? You you might think the number is fairly low since under the law, if you're an able-bodied adult without dependence, it's supposed to be much harder to get food stamps. As an able-bodied adult, uh you can't get SNAP benefits easily unless you meet all kinds of work requirements. But here's the amazing thing. 66% of SNAP recipients do not have children in their household. That's roughly 26 million people since, incredibly enough, more than 40 million people are on food stamps. Now, we've already discussed on the show how absurd it is that 40 million people in this country need food stamps in the first place. It's an obvious farce. Most of them are obese.

But the really interesting question is is that, you know, issue rather is that 26 million people are are still getting food stamps without kids. That shouldn't be possible. The laws are supposed to prevent food stamps from flowing to tens of millions of able-bodied Americans with no dependence to feed. They only have themselves to feed. You should be able to do that with like any job. Just feed yourself. Now, the trick, as as you might have guessed, is that tens of millions of people are pretending that they are not in fact able-bodied. In other words, we supposedly have around 20 million disabled people in this country who are so disabled that they cannot get food.

They need us to buy their food and also pay for their disability benefits on top of that. Of course, the scale of the fraud that's happening here is staggering. And everyone knows what's going on, by the way. Everyone knows, but no one is doing anything about it. People claim they have PTSD or a bad back or or whatever. I mean, they they make some claim of a of a of a of an ailment that cannot be proven. An ailment that cannot that won't show up on any scan. You can't do an MRI. You can't take a blood test. And so the only way to determine whether someone has it and some people do have these things, but the only way to know is if they say they have it and then they have no problem finding a doctor to sign off on it and and then they just stop working or as in the Graham Platner case, they might choose to keep working so they can double dip.

Now, we're talking about an amount of fraud that dwarfs what's happening in Minnesota, which is already outrageously high. And it's no mystery why this is happening. I mean, at the highest levels of government in academia, it's become fashionable to make disability normal as part of a larger plot to normalize communism. This is a recent speech at Harvard's public health school, for example. Listen,

if we want to move the needle for people with disabilities specifically, um you know, we have to have public policy that that looks at metrics um around are we actually getting people included?

How do we create a situation where um for a disabled child coming to a new school um in fact they won't be the first disabled child their classmates have gone to school with. disability will be part of the norm. Um, you know, if we can do that, we can move the needle on these specific challenges of the disabled experience. So, they want to make something that by definition is abnormal and most people are not disabled and turn into something that we see all the time. And the plan is working. This is from the Harvard Crimson. quote, "Roughly a fifth of undergraduate students at Harvard received disability accommodations last year, an increase of more than 15% over the past decade, according to data published annually by the N National Center for Education Statistics. The rise from roughly 3% in 2014 to 21% in 2024, brings the share of undergraduate students receiving accommodations at Harvard in line with the national

average, which has consistently hovered around 20%." Yes, the national average is now 20%. 20% of undergraduate students are also supposedly disabled. And then when these students go out into the real world, many of them claim to be disabled once again so that you have to pay their bills. They're victims and they're dependent on the system. It's almost like all along the left has done everything in its power to normalize dependency and empower the government at the same time. As Manny put it, they want to destroy the rugged individual and make him dependent on the collective, the warmth of collectivism. They want a generation of professional victims and disability fraud is one way they're doing it.

We need to see far far more action on this than we currently are seeing. Yes, swarm Minnesota with ICE and DHS and the FBI, deport the Somali, shut down the daycarees, but when you're done with that, work your way up. Go after the NOS's. go after anyone, Somali or not, who's defrauding the taxpayer by pretending to work or pretending to be disabled or pretending to be starving. We are not talking about insignificant amounts of money here. We're talking about a very large percentage of the tax dollars that we are forced to pay every year.

That's what we're talking about. What we're ultimately talking about is returning to Americans what is owed to us. If you'd like to see what else I have to say, you can access my full show by going to dailywire.com or by going to the Mattwalsh Show Twitter page. Hope to see you there.

Questions about this episode

Who speaks in "You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run"?

Matt Walsh (Host), Karen Bratland (Guest), Graham Platner (Guest).

What is "You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run" about?

The content explores allegations of widespread Medicare fraud involving a significant Somali community in Minnesota, suggesting that fraud is being encouraged by organizations like Blue Cross, which are purportedly promoting the establishment of daycare services. The discussion also touches on controversial views regarding the intelligence levels within the Somali population, connecting these to…

What is mentioned in this Matt Walsh episode?

4 people, works and ideas are mentioned, including Blue Cross, Feeding Our Future, Child Care Wayfinder, Karen Bratland. Each one on this page links to its own page with every episode that mentions it.

How long is "You Won't Believe How Deep The Medicare SCAMS Run"?

The episode runs 26 min; the transcript is about 4,615 words in 45 timestamped sections.

More from Matt Walsh

About this transcript: the episode's spoken words as captioned on YouTube, split into timestamped sections. Reclip.Me locates every person, work and idea in the text, keeps the time it is first named, and quotes the words around it verbatim. Last updated January 24, 2026.