WASHINGTON—California Governor Gavin Newsom has responded to Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Mehmet Oz's announcement that the Trump administration has suspended 800 hospice and home health providers in California. Oz claimed the actions were in response to uncovering what the administration describes as a massive Medicare fraud scheme tied to foreign-linked criminal networks that allegedly siphoned more than $1 billion from taxpayers.
Oz's announcement comes just days after CMS placed a six month nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for both hospices and home health agencies.
In an interview on FOX News, Oz said the healthcare system is being defrauded "at levels that no one thought imaginable."
"We have young people, old people and folks who are struggling in every state in the country. Some states take their responsibilities very seriously, other states have taken their eye off the ball, and they've gotten away with it," Oz said. "We believe there's foreign government involvement potentially—we have Russian mafia involvement in California, we have Chinese mafia involvement in New York, we believe we have Cuban mafia involvement in South Florida, with the fact there's twice as many durable medical equipment suppliers down there. There's twice as many of these companies as McDonald's in South Florida."
While Oz said they have concerns also about New York, Maine and Florida, he specifically focused on California, saying it was full of organizations that are committing fraudulent acts.
"We're shutting down, we believe, half of them because we don't think they're legitimately helping people..." he said.
Oz rejected the idea that the agency's decisions are politically motivated, saying the most important priority for him is protecting Medicaid and Medicare and "actually stopping bad people from corrupting the system."
"The first question we have to ask ourselves is: Is it really a flaw that you have this fraud, this corruption or is it a feature of the system?" Oz said. "... My concern is when you allow bad people to take advantage of our social support systems in this country, you're providing an opportunity for corruption."
California Governor Gavin Newsom responded on X.
"Dr. Oz loves to claim they have shut down payments to 800 hospices in LA, yet he won’t share that data so the state can hold bad actors accountable—as we always have," Newsom said in the post. "Instead, Dr. Oz keeps saying a bigger and bigger number—first it was a few hundred, then it was 500, now it’s seemingly 800! Are they refusing to coordinate and share info with the state because they don’t actually believe in partnering? Or because they can’t back up the numbers that they are using? We asked for clarification. We’re still waiting to hear back."
Newsom then posted a letter penned by Susan Fanelli, the chief deputy director for the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), to Oz requesting more details regarding the decision.
"CDPH values its ongoing partnership with CMS and shares a strong commitment to protecting program integrity, mitigating fraud, waste and abuse, and ensuring the delivery of safe, high-quality care," the letter said. "In the spirit of continued collaboration and alignment, we respectfully request further detail to better understand the scope and status of these actions. Providing this information is consistent with our notification of federal officials when we take action against a hospice licensee that is Medicare certified. This is especially important so we can better understand if we need to take similar actions in our state Medicaid program, called Medi-Cal, to further protect taxpayer dollars."
Specifically the state is calling for the following details:
- The nature of the action (termination, suspension or other action)
- The name and National Provider Identifier number for each entity for
which actions have been or are being taken - The date(s) associated with each action