Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Trump administration's top Medicare and Medicaid official, says the federal government will "aggressively" pursue what he described as organized crime networks exploiting California's healthcare system through hospice and other billing schemes.
Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said in a video posted to social media that the agency is focusing on alleged fraud tied to Russian and Armenian criminal groups operating in California.
"This mafia seems to have taken over the system. They corrupted doctors, they've normalized fraud so that everyone sort of expects it, but the magnitude of it is so great that we have to take it out aggressively," Oz said.
He added that the networks have worked with corrupt medical providers to enroll ineligible patients in hospice and bill for care that was not provided.
The effort is a priority for CMS and President Donald Trump, said Oz.
"It's a focus area for CMS, and this administration and President Trump are not going to tolerate taxpayer dollars being stolen because people aren't paying attention anymore," he said.
Oz's comments follow earlier statements in which he said hospice use in Los Angeles increased "sevenfold" over the last five years, a rise he said prompted an investigation.
He claimed at least 100,000 Medicare beneficiary numbers were turned over after what he described as improper certifications by "100 bad doctors" telling patients they were terminally ill.
Oz called Los Angeles County the "epicenter" of the alleged scheme and said organized crime "milked" more than $3.5 billion there. He did not provide supporting documentation in the video.
He also compared the allegations in California to a separate dispute with Minnesota, where he has been publicly pressuring Gov. Tim Walz over what he has described as large-scale Medicaid fraud.
Oz has said CMS is withholding some Medicaid funding to the state until the program restores "the integrity" of its operations.
In previous remarks, Oz said more than 1 billion was stolen in Minnesota through a fraud scheme he attributed to "bad actors" within the state's Somali community and said some money "may have even made its way" to al-Shabab, a militant group in Somalia, reports The New York Post.
"Our staff at CMS told me they've never seen anything like this in Medicaid, and everyone from Gov. Tim Walz on down needs to be investigated, because they've been asleep at the wheel," Oz said last month.
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