Dr. Oz goes after five states in Medicaid fraud crackdown
by Mary McCue Bell · The Washington TimesThe Trump administration’s offensive against fraud is focusing on five states: Minnesota, California, Florida, New York and Maine, with more to come.
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said that he has written letters to the states, looking at programs such as Medicaid and hospices.
Dr. Oz suspects foreign governments are involved in fraud schemes, including a Russian mafia presence in Los Angeles and a Chinese mafia presence in the Flushing neighborhood of Queens, New York, and possibly the Cuban government in South Florida, he told Fox News.
Federal officials suspended 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in the Los Angeles area due to suspected Medicare fraud after flagging an unusually high concentration of providers in the area with unusually high survival rates.
“We also began to notice that there were some folks who were probably not honorable doctors who were designated to supervise patients in multiple hospices,” Dr. Oz said. “A lot of hospitals had foreigners that owned them, or they were able to cheat by keeping the numbers of their membership low enough that they don’t have to actually report their outcomes.”
He previously demanded all 50 states identify and remove noncompliant Medicaid providers, setting a 10-business-day deadline in April for governors to commit to a swift “revalidation” of high-risk providers.
“We can audit states that don’t want to comply with the revalidation request,” he said.
The anti-fraud task force is led by Vice President J.D. Vance, working closely with Dr. Oz and CMS. The vice president previously announced a nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for specific durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and supplies, targeting seven key supplier types. The six-month pause aims to combat over $1.5 billion in suspected fraudulent billing.
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• Mary McCue Bell can be reached at mbell@washingtontimes.com.