Minnesota’s Early Intensive Developmental and Behavioral Intervention (EIDBI) program for children with autism was launched with the best of intentions. But this unlicensed program has grown exponentially over the past decade. Shockingly, only 6 of nearly 500 providers have applied to become licensed. The rest will be unable to operate after June 2026.
The decline might come as no surprise to anyone who has watched an open bar at a spring break event suddenly start charging for drinks and checking IDs. Oversight tends to curb bad behavior—but in a well-run state, it should prevent it in the first place.
Rep. Kristin Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, highlighted the program’s staggering growth during a February 23 hearing. The EIDBI budget ballooned from $1 million in 2017 to $343 million by 2024—a more than 34,000% increase—while the number of providers surged from 41 to nearly 500.
Now that number is plummeting. When the state finally imposed basic reforms by requiring licensure to weed out fraud, the response exposed the depth of the problem. Vice Chair Rep. Patti Anderson reacted bluntly: “There are 500 unlicensed providers, and only six applied for licensure, which is shocking.”
In a recent constituent update, Anderson noted, “The good news is that fraudsters are running scared. However, the extent of the fraud that has been exposed makes it difficult to believe that members of the executive branch were oblivious to what has been taking place in plain sight.”
Over the past six months, federal indictments have begun exposing systemic abuse. Asha Farhan Hassan was charged with defrauding the EIDBI program of $14 million. According to charging documents, “Many of these claims were fraudulently inflated, were billed without providers’ knowledge, and were for services that were not actually provided.” The documents also note that between 2020 and 2021, Hassan claimed to have served nearly 200,000 meals to children at the Smart Therapy site, for which she sought approximately $465,000 in Federal Child Nutrition Program funds.
Prosecutors allege that parents were recruited to have their children diagnosed with autism (a near-guaranteed outcome) in exchange for kickbacks. “There was no child that Smart Therapy was not able to get qualified for autism services,” leading to monthly kickbacks of $300 to $1,500 per child. The amount depended on the level of services authorized by the Department of Human Services (DHS)—the higher the authorization, the higher the kickback.”
Minnesota DHS Inspector General James Clark reported that after 338 site visits, 54 centers voluntarily closed while 18 were shut down by the state. Rep. Anderson found this figure suspiciously low, suggesting centers may have received advance notice: “Which is what I think is happening,” she said.
During the hearing, Clark also faced pushback from legislators referencing a highly redacted report commissioned from Optum (a Minnesota health care technology company) that flagged up to 90% of all billings in the EIDBI program. Legislators are now working to force the administration to release the unredacted report. More to come…
The post Minnesota’s EIDBI Autism Program: Explosive Growth, Widespread Fraud, and a Coming Reckoning appeared first on American Experiment.
