Oz announces new nationwide Medicaid anti-fraud effort coming, but offers no details

WASHINGTON – Dr. Mehmet Oz announced last week that all 50 states will be required to explain their plans to revalidate some of their Medicaid providers.

Oz, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) Administrator, made the announcement April 21 during a health care summit hosted by Politico. In the announcement, Oz said that the CMS will ask states to share their strategies within 30 days, according to several online news reports.

"It's an example of what we'd like them to do to prove that they're serious about this," Oz said during the event. "And if you don't take it seriously, it indicates to us that we might have to take the audits that we're doing to the different states more aggressively," he said, without elaborating.

Tuesday's announcement is part of a federal campaign to tackle waste, fraud, and abuse in federal Medicaid and Medicare programs that so far has mostly targeted Democratic states -- and at least once has erred in its accusations.

Earlier this month, the Associated Press reported that CMS made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe in New York. The acknowledgment deepened doubts in the administration's methods and raised a common criticism that has been made about the second Trump administration -- that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.

The announcement is the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration aimed at what it believes is billions of dollars in fraud, waste and abuse. Most notably, in February, Oz imposed a six‑month nationwide moratorium on new Medicare enrollments of DMEPOS medical supply companies.

In late March, Florida's Agency for Health Care Administration announced a temporary moratorium for the enrollment of new durable medical equipment (DME) providers in Florida Medicaid

In March, the president signed an executive order creating the Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which will advise the president and coordinate government-wide efforts to combat widespread fraud, waste and abuse in federal benefit programs.