Imagine leaving your front door unlocked for four years, then acting surprised when the place is cleaned out. That’s essentially what happened with Medicaid — a program meant to serve America’s most vulnerable — while the Biden administration looked the other way. Now someone’s finally walking through the house with a flashlight. And what they’re finding should make every taxpayer’s blood boil.
When President Trump declared a “war on fraud” and Vice President Vance stood up a dedicated anti-fraud task force, the usual critics called it political theater. It wasn’t. The administration tapped Dr. Mehmet Oz to run the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services with one job: find out where the money is actually going. Turns out, a lot of it was going straight into the pockets of criminals.
Medicaid is massive — states run it, but you and I foot the bill. For years, oversight was paper-thin at best. Then Minnesota’s $250 million “Feeding Our Future” scandal blew the lid off, and the Trump administration responded by withholding $259.5 million in federal Medicaid funding, threatening over $2 billion in annual cuts until the state submitted a corrective plan. That was the canary in the coal mine. Nobody expected what came next.
Following the money
Dr. Oz has now zeroed in on five states — Minnesota, California, Florida, New York, and Maine — sending formal letters demanding answers. More are coming.
From Fox News Digital:
The fact that we can suspend more than 400 hospices from getting paid in just a few weeks highlights the reality that no one was watching the till for the last several years. I love Medicaid. When you love something, you protect it. You don’t let it get defrauded.
Four hundred hospices in Los Angeles alone — suspended almost overnight once somebody actually bothered to look. These were programs designed for patients in the final six months of life. The problem? Survival rates were suspiciously high. In some cases, every single patient survived. Hospice care where nobody dies — what could possibly be suspicious about that?
Then there’s the foreign angle, and this is where it gets infuriating. Oz told Fox News Digital that the Cuban government appears implicated in durable medical equipment fraud across South Florida, where there are now twice as many DME suppliers hawking wheelchairs and knee braces as there are McDonald’s restaurants. Russian mafia operations are embedded in LA’s hospice network. Chinese criminal organizations have set up shop in Flushing, Queens. Let that sink in — foreign criminals and hostile governments, billing American taxpayers like it’s an all-you-can-eat buffet.
All 50 governors on notice
Oz isn’t stopping at five states. He’s put every governor in the country on the clock — 10 business days to commit to revalidating high-risk providers, 30 days for a broader cleanup strategy. His message at Politico’s Health Care Summit left zero room for ambiguity: “If you don’t take it seriously, it indicates to us that we might have to take the audits more aggressively.”
Your money, their scheme
Here’s what galls me. California’s own state auditor flagged hospice fraud to Governor Newsom back in 2022. Nothing meaningful changed until the federal government kicked the door in. That’s not a bureaucratic hiccup — that’s a choice. And it’s the inevitable result of a governing philosophy that throws money at systems and never checks whether they actually work.
Every fraudulent dollar stolen from Medicaid compounds a national debt that already threatens our children’s future. This isn’t abstract budget talk. Real people — some of them foreign criminals — are enriching themselves on the backs of hardworking Americans while genuinely vulnerable patients struggle to get care. How long was this supposed to go on before somebody noticed?
The lights are on now. For the first time in years, someone is checking the receipts — and what they’re uncovering is exactly why elections have consequences. The cleanup is long overdue. Let’s make sure it finishes.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Oz has targeted five states for Medicaid fraud crackdowns, with more on the way.
- Foreign criminal organizations and hostile governments are exploiting U.S. taxpayer-funded health programs.
- Over 400 LA hospices were suspended in weeks — proving nobody had been watching for years.
- All 50 governors now face federal deadlines to root out fraud or face aggressive audits.
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