Free Speech Data
Act One
EP00
The Download
THE ORIGIN STORY
Act 1 · Episode 0
The Download
How two podcast guys ended up with a trillion dollars of Medicaid data. The phone call. The dataset. The Starbucks. Before the investigation begins — this is how it started.
January 8, 2026~9:15 min
“The money isn't following the patients. It's following something else.”
Key Findings
1CMS released 487GB of consolidated Medicaid data (2018-2024)
2$1.093 trillion in total spending across 227 million records
332 of top 150 providers could not be verified
Data Points
Data
617,503 unique providers in dataset
Data
Top 1% of providers get 43% of spending
Data
Top provider: $7.18B — identity redacted
People & Entities
David PhungCMSDOGE
Locations
AtlantaUnited States