Dr. Mehmet Oz constructed his repute as “America’s Doctor” by meting out easy-to-follow medical recommendation on TV.
Now, as a top health official within the Trump administration, he’s harnessing his charisma and TV expertise to ship a unique message: that Medicare and Medicaid are riddled with fraud, including to the price of the huge public healthcare packages.
With a digicam crew nonetheless in tow, he’s going on-site in a number of, largely Democratic-led, states to movie video after video calling out improper and questionable spending. He’s additionally filmed himself tagging together with armed federal brokers raiding allegedly fraudulent healthcare suppliers.
The campaign has not solely endeared Oz to Donald Trump but in addition made him a prime lieutenant within the president’s quest to root out wasteful spending in federal social packages.
The extremely produced movies, seen hundreds of thousands of occasions on social media, are a giant a part of messaging geared toward convincing voters that Trump is fulfilling his marketing campaign promise to handle Americans’ healthcare costs.
Best recognized for frequent “Oprah” appearances that parlayed into the long-running “The Dr. Oz Show,” he was tapped by Trump final 12 months to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.
Since then, Oz has constructed a repute as a gradual voice within the Trump administration’s sprawling well being equipment, which has undergone dramatic upheaval with downsizing and coverage adjustments, together with some which were questioned by mainstream drugs. Oz additionally has taken a number one position in negotiating decrease drug costs with greater than a dozen producers.
But consultants have questioned Oz’s claims that there are a lot of billions of {dollars} in fraudulent spending to slash in public medical health insurance packages, lots of which cowl essentially the most susceptible Americans. They warn the hassle could also be geared toward chopping federal spending even when it’s not warranted, whereas undermining a vital program.
“There is fraud against Medicaid, and we need to get on it. But I don’t believe it’s ‘rampant.’ I don’t believe it’s ‘staggering,’ and I don’t think there’s any evidence for that,” stated Andy Schneider, a analysis professor at Georgetown University and former CMS senior adviser throughout the Obama administration. “But that’s the kind of rhetoric that Dr. Oz and other people in the administration are using, and I don’t think it’s helpful.”
CMS advised NCS that Oz has been a key a part of the fraud marketing campaign. “With a whole of government approach, the task force, HHS and CMS are delivering at record pace win after win on the President’s War on Fraud,” it stated.
Not lengthy after Trump gained the presidency in 2024, a few of his prime allies within the healthcare world convened at Oz’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, the place they sat round a dinner desk discussing how they had been going to repair healthcare.
Oz, now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a cohort of “Make America Healthy Again” supporters, and a handful of officers from the primary Trump administration cycled by means of the beachfront mansion, discussing objectives like the best way to sort out perceived corruption throughout the healthcare system.
It was a kind of “healthcare Hyannis Port,” in line with Michael Caputo, a former well being official from the primary Trump administration, who was in attendance.
Current and former Trump officers who spoke to NCS described a cost-cutting, fraud-finding campaign that they consider will resonate with voters forward of the midterm elections — and Oz’s efforts are being seen in a positively throughout the administration. He is a central participant on Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud process power.
There is a way that “if things are going to get done, they’re likely going to get done through CMS,” stated one former official. “At CMS, you’ve got Oz in a place, a clear chief of staff, a strategy that people can understand and get behind.”
Speaking in The Villages, a big retirement group in Florida, on Friday, Trump praised his administrator. “We have a man here who knows more about Medicaid, Medicare, medical crap than any human being,” he stated.
And Oz has taken on the fraud-fighting mantle with gusto.
Minutes after being sworn in, he was already railing towards alleged criminals stealing from susceptible Americans and from taxpayers in healthcare packages.
“We have created a war room at CMS to go after, to catch the fraud in real time before the money leaves the federal coffers,” he stated, addressing Trump.
Oz estimates that fraud, waste and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program whole $100 billion. His efforts largely give attention to areas which have seen giant will increase in billing or in suppliers taking part within the packages.
At the center of his anti-fraud battle are social media movies and letters to governors with calls for for details about their Medicaid packages. The missives take an adversarial tone, blaming state leaders for not doing sufficient, requiring responses inside weeks and threatening to behave.
In April, he introduced that CMS has requested all 50 states to submit plans on how they may revalidate Medicaid suppliers in areas deemed excessive threat. States could have 30 days to conform, ensuring that the suppliers are authentic, ship the providers they’re being paid for and do it the best approach.
In one in all his preliminary actions earlier this 12 months, Oz introduced CMS would quickly withhold $259 million in federal matching funds for Minnesota till the state can show that its Medicaid suppliers weren’t fraudulent and that some people served have the correct immigration standing. Last week, he adopted up by quickly withholding one other $91 billion, saying on X that “we cannot and will not pay bad bills so we’re asking for more information from Minnesota to verify these bills.”
Other high-profile targets have included social grownup daycare and home-care packages funded by Medicaid in New York and California’s hospice and home-care providers suppliers.
Oz has additionally questioned funds for autism providers for kids in Maine, and, in the one pink state on his public shaming checklist, blasted fraud dedicated by medical tools suppliers in South Florida.
In one action-packed video final month, Oz narrates a SWAT workforce raid towards a California couple charged by the Justice Department with defrauding Mediare by billing for providers they didn’t present.
“We had a bunch of hospice operators that have been getting away with fraud and corruption for a long time,” Oz says as he strides towards the raid workforce. “That stops today.”
The couple seized within the video had been two of seven medical practitioners and hospice operators arrested or charged with Medicaid fraud within the enforcement motion.
Oz has additionally traveled across the nation — together with to Minneapolis, Southern California, New York City, Florida and Nevada — to take viewers to websites the place he alleges fraud is going on.
In one other video, filmed in South Florida, which he calls “the hotbed of durable medical equipment supplier fraud,” Oz claims there are extra suppliers than McDonald’s within the space. One alleged perpetrator tried to flee on a Jet Ski with a number of hundred thousand {dollars} in a backpack, he says, because the video reveals a person with a backpack on a Jet Ski.
These movies are among the many nicely over a dozen that Oz has posted to his social media accounts this 12 months. He has additionally appeared on quite a few information reveals and podcasts discussing the difficulty.
Criticism and reward
To make certain, fraud has lengthy existed in Medicare and Medicaid, primarily perpetrated by suppliers, not enrollees — whom GOP lawmakers have typically focused. But there’s no information obtainable on the whole sum of money misplaced to fraud within the two packages, and Oz’s claims have been discovered to be inaccurate no less than as soon as.
Prosecutions give an inkling of the extent of the issue. Medicaid Fraud Control Units, which function in all states, recovered $1.2 billion in prison fraud convictions in fiscal 12 months 2025, in line with the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. (Total Medicaid spending that 12 months was $1 trillion.)
The effort to make use of information to search out billing patterns that might be indicative of fraud predates the Trump administration. CMS estimates that it stopped $11.9 billion in probably fraudulent Medicare funds between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, in line with a latest report from the Government Accountability Office. Under President Joe Biden, some motion was taken — for instance Medicare officers advised the accountability workplace that the info helped them halt greater than $4 billion in funds for provides that had been billed however by no means delivered.
Prosecutions for healthcare fraud are widespread. Last 12 months, the Justice Department introduced it had charged 324 defendants for his or her alleged participation in additional than $14.6 billion in fraud schemes, greater than double the earlier document.
But Oz’s techniques have met with blended evaluations.
Democratic governors and left-leaning coverage consultants say he’s intentionally focusing on blue states in a political ploy and are difficult his claims.
For instance, one in all Oz’s eye-popping accusations was that greater than 5 million Medicaid beneficiaries in New York — or three-quarters of the whole quantity enrolled — acquired private care providers throughout a part of 2025.
Michael Kinnucan, well being coverage director on the progressive Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, seemed intently on the information and decided that CMS probably added up all of the enrollees who obtain this service month after month, fairly than counting people solely as soon as.
The error reveals that Oz has a weak grasp of the packages he’s accusing of fraud, Kinnucan advised NCS.
“The effort here is not to fight fraud or force New York to do a better job of fighting fraud,” he stated. “They want to cut federal spending.”
More than a month later, Oz and CMS acknowledged the error, saying that the precise quantity was about 450,000 beneficiaries.
However, Oz’s claims of rampant fraud in social grownup daycare packages in New York — together with paying seniors to say they’re attending however not truly offering any providers — are spot on, stated Derek Adams, a associate at Potomac Law Group. He is joyful that Oz is elevating consciousness of the difficulty, which hurts authentic suppliers like his shoppers.
“The government needs to do more on the issue,” Adams stated. “There have been far, far too few actions.”
In California, the hospice trade has welcomed Oz’s efforts, saying extra must be performed. In a 2022 report on hospice companies, the state’s auditor discovered that “the State’s weak controls have created the opportunity for large-scale fraud and abuse” and highlighted most of the identical considerations as Oz.
The state stopped issuing new licenses to hospice suppliers that 12 months, however a few of the present ones are nonetheless committing fraud, stated Sheila Clark, CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association.
Last 12 months, Clark supplied data on potential fraud to CMS officers, whom she described as very inquisitive and considerate. They labored rapidly to take away from hospice care Medicare beneficiaries who had been fraudulently enrolled — permitting them to regain their common Medicare protection.
“Their enforcement actions have got teeth, and they are having real impact,” she stated.
CMS has shut down federal funding for 450 hospices and house healthcare companies in California, Oz stated at Politico’s Health Care Summit in April.
Oz’s actions mirror what CMS ought to be doing to guard Medicare and Medicaid and guarantee federal funds are being spent appropriately, stated Brian Blase, head of the conservative Paragon Institute.
“What he’s doing is making it clear the problems within some of these programs and that we need to fix them,” stated Blase, who labored as a well being coverage adviser in Trump’s first time period.
Still, some consultants query whether or not Oz’s strategies are one of the simplest ways to fight fraud, saying the federal authorities ought to associate with states fairly than bully them and disrupt or threaten their federal matching funds. That’s not the way in which to make this system work higher, stated Schneider of Georgetown University.
Schneider, who suggested on Medicaid integrity points at CMS, argues the give attention to fraud is a approach for the Trump administration to shift the Americans’ consideration away from the sweeping healthcare cuts Republicans enacted final 12 months.
“Invoking fraud is a way to degrade [Medicaid’s] reputation,” he stated. “This is part of a longer-term strategy to weaken popular support for the program.”
Oz has contended that he loves Medicaid and desires to ensure that individuals who want well being providers can entry them.
“If you love something, you protect it,” he stated at Politico’s summit.