Investigations

Deloitte won at least $6 billion in state Medicaid eligibility contracts

Enrollment errors cut off pregnant Texans and Rhode Island families while Senate Democrats opened an inquiry.

States awarded Deloitte at least $6 billion in contracts to build Medicaid and SNAP eligibility systems used from Rhode Island to Texas, More Perfect Union reported. The consulting firm holds agreements with about 25 states for platforms that verify income, store uploaded documents, and decide who keeps coverage.

In North Little Rock, Olivia Cleveland works about 20 hours a week as a library clerk and tends a youth-home garden while raising her eight-year-old son on roughly $25,000 a year. She uploaded 27 files to Arkansas's benefits portal after a SNAP denial and watched the same Deloitte-built system mark her son ineligible for Medicaid on the eve of a medication appointment.

Texas whistleblowers told state leaders in 2023 that coding errors in the Medicaid eligibility platform wrongly denied coverage to nearly 6,000 pregnant women during the post-pandemic redetermination. Advocates later asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Deloitte over the Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System, citing wrongful removals that persisted across cohorts of enrollees.

Rhode Island residents reported missing benefits, hours-long call waits, and documents that vanished after uploading to the Unified Health Infrastructure Project, which Deloitte built. Company representatives apologized to lawmakers in 2018 for botching the rollout of the system, also called RI Bridges.

Georgia hired Deloitte to build and market Georgia Pathways, a Medicaid program that requires work reporting. A federal watchdog reported in September 2025 that the demonstration spent $54.2 million on administrative costs between October 2020 and March 2025 and $26.2 million on health care, with most administration tied to eligibility changes and enrollment systems.

Equifax sells governments access to its Work Number database to verify employment and income. Kansas paid almost $20 per lookup while some federal agencies paid $5 for the same service, and the One Big Beautiful Bill will require states to confirm Medicaid and SNAP eligibility twice a year instead of annually, expanding the market Equifax's CEO described as a $4 billion opportunity.

Many Deloitte contracts bill states for enhancements, changes to code that keep platforms running or comply with new law. A KFF analysis cited one contractor estimating 35 straightforward software fixes at more than 100,000 hours. Wisconsin is paying Deloitte more than $10 million to update its system under the new federal rules, and Nevada nearly $5 million.

Arkansas paid Deloitte more than $400 million for its benefits platform, and state Senator Bart Hester, the Senate president pro tempore, told interviewers the company implements SNAP and Medicaid efficiently despite problems in every government program. Two partners at Deloitte's Arkansas lobbying firm, Gilmore Davis Strategy Group, are former top aides to state governors, and the company's political action committee donated to lawmakers the year its contract came up for renewal.

In October 2025, Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden and Senators Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Raphael Warnock launched an inquiry into Deloitte and three other Medicaid IT contractors over error-prone eligibility systems. The letters asked whether contracts tie payments to removing enrollees and demanded five years of lobbying disclosures.

Starting in 2027, many Medicaid adults will need to document at least 80 hours of work a month. When Arkansas tried work requirements in 2018, 18,000 residents lost coverage, and the state recently mailed more than 60,000 letters warning recipients they could lose Medicaid next year. Olivia Cleveland received one saying her son's coverage would end because he does not work.

Source video: Deloitte Got Paid $6 Billion To Deny Healthcare. We Followed The Money.