Alan Cole, senior economist at the Tax Foundation, took that bet, telling WSJ reporter Richard Rubin how and why he dropped $342,195.63 into a prediction-market wager on the Kalshi platform. Cole said that he looked at the terms of the Kalshi wager and saw an opportunity, because he did not believe anything Musk would do would significantly curtail spending on interest on the national debt or entitlements like Social Security and Medicare, especially as America's population continued to age.
Driving the news: Musk took to X on Friday to celebrate the release of Medicaid data on claims, medical procedures and payments from January 2018 through December 2024. "Medicaid data has been open sourced, so the level of fraud is easy to identify," Musk wrote. "DOGE is not a department, it's a state of mind." The Department of Health and Human Services collects Medicaid claims data from states that administer the program. Until now, much of the information has been fragmented and difficult to access.