been fueled in part by medicaid the federal program that provides medical care for poor and disabled americans. medicaid recipients typically pay a small co-payment for medical expenses and medicines and that includes opioid painkillers. according to a new report released exclusively to this show by the senate homeland security committee a medicaid recipient can pay as little as $1 to receive 240 opioid painkillers. those pills can be resold on the street for $4,000 and, of course, that creates a huge incentive for black market sales which, unfortunately, are common thousand people charged with medicaid fraud. not just medicaid, medicare and v.a. have seen extensive opioid fraud as well and many people have died as a result. the federal government is literally playing to flood communities with addictive pills. senator ron johnson is holding a hearing on this part of the crisis tomorrow before the senate homeland security committee. hopefully the rest of the
the justice department has vowed to crack down on opioid fraud and abuse. and yesterday the president says the administration plans to increase federal drug prosecutions rapidly. the trump administration has increased the number of deportation orders since taking office but the number of actual deportation levels is behind president obama. they ordered 57,000 people to leave the u.s. from february to june of this year. but more than 16,000 of them won their cases allowing them to stay. the data shows that 17,000 deportations a month under the trump administration so far, compared to 20,000 a month under president obama. the current administration is making more arrests but deporting at a slower pace. there is a current backlog of more than 600,000 cases which the justice department says it is working through. all right. let s get a check on your weather now with nbc meteorologist kill carnes. some severe weather and flash flood warnings from east texas