Federal Medicaid czar Dr. Mehmet Oz said New York’s overblown $110 billion spending on medical bills is sickening — as he claimed Chinese crime syndicates are ripping off the Empire State.
The TV doctor-turned-Trump administration official, blasted New York’s Medicaid program as rife with fraud in an interview Sunday as he outlined an alleged scheme that included millions of dollars in fraudulent medical bills.
“Social safety net programs are being defrauded. They’re being hurt oftentimes by foreign governments or foreign-run criminal syndicate organizations,” Oz, administrator of the US Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said Sunday on 77 WABC ‘s the “Cats Roundtable” program.
Oz recently toured Flushing, Queens where a cluster of 64 social adult care centers operate — mostly serving ethnic Chinese and Korean senior citizens. Officials claim the center and pharmacies have generated massive amounts of questionable bills to Medicaid, a public insurance program intended to help the needy.
The social centers arguably shouldn’t be propped up by taxpayers, Oz said. The federal government covers more than half of Medicaid’s costs, with the state and local governments covering the rest.
“Normally, the government doesn’t pay for it. In New York, they’ve created a mechanism to pay for these programs,” Oz told host John Catsimatidis.
“These are run, we believe, under the auspices of the Chinese organized criminal groups that are also doing human trafficking in the East Coast.”
He didn’t specify which organizations may be behind the scheme or provide further details.
Oz, who had been joined on the tour by independent journalist Nick Shirley, said he was stunned by the plethora of pharmacies in Flushing that he also suspects are milking Medicaid.
Under the scheme, the scammers will bribe seniors to get access to their Medicaid or Medicare cards, and then submit fraudulent bills to the Medicaid program.
“There are a dozen pharmacies on one block. Why? They’re all fake. They’re taking these Medicare beneficiary numbers and manufacturing huge businesses to fund illegal activities,” Oz said.
“They pretend they’re sending this really expensive wheelchair [to a patient],” he railed. “They pretend that they’re sending expensive random medications. They’re doing appointments they [patients] never go to. Tests they never get. Treatments they don’t receive or don’t need.
“And they begin to bankrupt all the legitimate people, because they make so much money … These programs have generated $2.1 billion against New York Medicaid.”
He said New York is encouraging the bloated spending and fraud, calling the questionable add-on programs such as social adult day care and personal care services a “feature” not just a “flaw.”
Earlier this year, Oz opened an investigation into New York’s Medicaid program, the most expensive per resident in the nation, claiming it was rife with waste, fraud and abuse.
Oz said New York’s personal care program, where relatives get paid to take care of a loved one at home, has also spiraled out of control.
He said New York is allowing the powerful health care workers union, SEIU Local 1199, to unionize the personal care attendants.
“It’s a jobs program,” Oz claimed. “We learned that the unions are now unionizing these people, which means the federal government is paying salaries that go to union dues, and then the union dues fund the campaigns of the Democrats in the state. So now, you have political patronage on top of a jobs program,,
In a dig at Hochul, Oz said, “Is that a really smart thing to do if you lead the State of New York?”
“They’re using the federal government as a piggy bank,” he added.
New York’s $40 billion portion of Medicaid spending has become so expensive that it has surpassed state aid to K-12 schools, the Post reported last week, based on a budget analysis conducted by state Comptroller Tom DiNapoli’s office.
“Fraud is rising because government wants it to exist,” he said.
But President Trump’s team has had enough and notified New York and others states and the fraudsters that the party is over, Oz said.
He said his office and the entire Department of Health and Human Services headed by Robert Kennedy Jr. are working closely with Vice President JD Vance, the IRS and other agencies as part of the White House Task Force on Fraud to root out waste in Medicaid.
Hochul defended her management of the Medicaid program in a statement.
“Well before the Trump administration even took office, Governor Hochul was leading efforts to root out waste, fraud and abuse – including sweeping CDPAP [Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Program], reforms that shut down hundreds of wasteful Medicaid middlemen and saved over $2 billion for state and federal taxpayers while protecting home care for those who need it,” a Hochul spokesperson said.
“New York will continue to work with the federal government to identify bad actors — but let’s be clear about the real goal for Donald Trump and Washington Republicans: eliminating programs that support our most vulnerable and ripping away healthcare from everyday New Yorkers.”
Her office New York developed its Social Adult Day Care program in partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services via a waiver approved by the feds. Other states operate similar programs.
