2026-05-04T10:00:51.552Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/04/politics/dr-oz-trump-medicare-medicaid-fraud
医学博士穆罕默德·奥兹凭借在电视上提供通俗易懂的医疗建议，树立了“美国医生”的声誉。
如今，作为特朗普政府的高级卫生官员，他正利用自己的个人魅力和电视主持技能传递截然不同的信息：医保（Medicare）和医疗补助计划（Medicaid）充斥着欺诈行为，推高了这项大规模公共医疗项目的成本。
他身边始终带着摄制组，前往多个以民主党主政为主的州实地拍摄视频，曝光不当且存疑的开支。他还拍摄了自己陪同武装联邦特工突袭涉嫌欺诈的医疗服务提供商的画面。
这场打假行动不仅让奥兹赢得了唐纳德·特朗普的青睐，还让他成为总统打击联邦社会项目浪费性开支行动中的核心副手。
这些制作精良的视频在社交媒体上获得了数百万次观看，是特朗普政府宣传攻势的重要组成部分，旨在说服选民特朗普正在兑现其竞选承诺，解决美国人的医疗成本问题。
奥兹因频繁登上《奥普拉脱口秀》而声名大噪，随后推出了长寿节目《奥兹医生秀》。去年，特朗普任命他担任医保与医疗补助服务中心（CMS）主任。
自上任以来，奥兹在特朗普政府庞大的卫生体系中树立了稳健发声者的形象。该体系经历了大幅精简和政策调整，其中一些政策受到主流医学界的质疑。奥兹还牵头与十余家制药厂商谈判降低药品价格。
但专家们对奥兹所称的公共医疗保险计划中存在数千亿美元欺诈开支可被削减的说法提出了质疑。这些计划中的许多项目覆盖了美国最弱势群体。他们警告称，这场行动可能旨在在不必要的情况下削减联邦开支，同时破坏这一关键计划。
“医疗补助计划确实存在欺诈，我们需要加以整治。但我不认为这种现象‘猖獗’，也不认为数额‘惊人’，更没有证据支持这一点，”乔治敦大学研究教授、奥巴马政府时期医保与医疗补助服务中心高级顾问安迪·施奈德说道，“但奥兹博士和政府其他官员正是用了这类说辞，我认为这毫无益处。”
医保与医疗补助服务中心告诉CNN，奥兹一直是这场打假行动的核心人物。“通过跨部门协作，专项工作组、卫生与公众服务部以及医保与医疗补助服务中心正以创纪录的速度，在总统的‘打假战争’中屡战屡胜，”该中心表示。
2024年特朗普胜选后不久，他在医疗领域的几位核心盟友齐聚奥兹位于佛罗里达州棕榈滩的宅邸，围坐在餐桌旁讨论如何改革医疗体系。
奥兹、时任卫生与公众服务部部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪、一众“让美国更健康”运动支持者，以及首届特朗普政府的几名官员轮番到访这座海滨宅邸，讨论如何整治医疗体系中被认为存在的腐败问题等目标。
曾出席此次聚会的首届特朗普政府前卫生官员迈克尔·卡普托称，这里堪称“医疗版的海恩尼斯港”（肯尼迪家族标志性聚会地点）。
接受CNN采访的现任和前任特朗普政府官员表示，这场削减开支、打击欺诈的行动预计会在中期选举前赢得选民共鸣，而奥兹的努力在政府内部获得了积极评价。他是副总统JD·万斯领导的反欺诈专项工作组的核心成员。
一名前官员表示，外界有种共识：“如果要推进相关工作，大概率会通过医保与医疗补助服务中心来完成。”“在医保与医疗补助服务中心，奥兹坐镇掌舵，配备了明确的办公厅主任团队，制定了众人能够理解并支持的战略。”
上周五，特朗普在佛罗里达州大型退休社区“乡村之地”发表讲话时称赞了自己的这位主任。“我们这里有个人比任何人都更了解医疗补助、医保以及医疗行业的种种乱象，”他说道。
奥兹也满怀热忱地扛起了打假的大旗。
宣誓就职几分钟后，他就开始谴责那些从弱势美国民众和纳税人手中窃取医疗项目资金的所谓罪犯。
“我们在医保与医疗补助服务中心设立了作战室，以便在资金流出联邦国库之前实时追踪、抓获欺诈行为，”他在向特朗普发表讲话时说道。
奥兹估计，医保、医疗补助计划、《平价医疗法案》以及儿童健康保险计划中的欺诈、浪费和滥用行为总额高达1000亿美元。他的工作重点主要集中在账单申报激增或参与项目的服务提供商数量大幅增加的领域。
他的反欺诈斗争核心在于社交媒体视频和致各州州长的信函，要求对方提供本州医疗补助计划的相关信息。这些信函语气强硬，指责州领导人履职不力，要求对方在数周内作出回应，并威胁将采取行动。
今年4月，他宣布医保与医疗补助服务中心已要求全美50个州提交计划，说明将如何对被认定为高风险地区的医疗补助服务提供商进行重新认证。各州需在30天内完成整改，确保服务提供商资质合法、提供合同约定的服务并规范操作。
今年早些时候，奥兹采取的首批行动之一便是宣布，将暂时扣留明尼苏达州2.59亿美元的联邦配套资金，直至该州证明其医疗补助服务提供商不存在欺诈行为，且部分受助人员具备合法移民身份。上周，他跟进宣布再扣留910亿美元资金，并在X平台上表示：“我们不能也不会为不实账单买单，因此我们要求明尼苏达州提供更多信息以核实这些账单。”
其他备受关注的打击目标包括纽约州由医疗补助计划资助的社交成人日托和家庭护理项目，以及加利福尼亚州的临终关怀和家庭护理服务提供商。
奥兹还质疑缅因州儿童自闭症服务的支付合理性，并将佛罗里达州南部的医疗设备提供商欺诈行为公之于众——这是他公开谴责的对象中唯一的红色州。
上个月，奥兹在一条https://x.com/DrOzCMS/status/2045251869627269307?s=20的X平台帖文中，旁白解说了针对一对加州夫妇的特警突袭行动。这对夫妇被司法部指控通过 billed 未提供的服务骗取医保资金。
“有一批临终关怀机构经营者长期以来一直在逍遥法外，实施欺诈和腐败行为，”奥兹一边走向突袭小队一边说道，“这种情况今天就会终止。”
视频中被抓获的这对夫妇，是此次执法行动中因医疗补助计划欺诈被捕或被控的7名医疗从业者和临终关怀机构经营者中的两位。
奥兹还走遍全美各地——包括明尼阿波利斯、南加州、纽约市、佛罗里达州和内华达州——带领观众前往他声称存在欺诈行为的现场。
在另一条https://x.com/DrOzCMS/status/2033955189141737593?s=20的视频中，拍摄于被奥兹称为“耐用医疗设备供应商欺诈温床”的南佛罗里达州。他称该地区的供应商数量比麦当劳门店还多。他表示，一名涉案嫌疑人曾背着装有数十万美元现金的背包试图乘喷气滑雪艇逃离，视频画面中也出现了一名背着背包的男子驾驶喷气滑雪艇的场景。
这些视频只是奥兹今年在其社交媒体账号上发布的十几条内容中的一部分。他还曾亮相众多新闻节目和播客，讨论这一问题。
批评与赞扬
诚然，医保和医疗补助计划中的欺诈行为早已存在，主要实施者是服务提供商，而非参保人员——而共和党议员常常将矛头对准参保人员。但目前尚无数据显示这两项计划因欺诈损失的总金额，且奥兹的说法至少有一次被证实不准确。
起诉案件能让人略窥问题的严重程度。根据卫生与公众服务部监察长办公室的数据，2025财年，各州运营的医疗补助计划欺诈控制部门通过刑事欺诈定罪追回了12亿美元。（当年医疗补助计划总开支为1万亿美元。）
利用数据寻找可能预示欺诈的账单模式的工作，早在特朗普政府之前就已展开。根据美国政府问责局最近的一份报告，医保与医疗补助服务中心估计，在2022财年至2024财年间，该中心已阻止了119亿美元的潜在欺诈性医保支付。在乔·拜登总统任期内，也采取了一些行动——例如，医保官员告诉问责局，相关数据帮助他们阻止了超过40亿美元因 billed 但未交付的耗材产生的支付。
医疗保健欺诈的起诉案件屡见不鲜。去年，司法部宣布已起诉324名被告，指控他们参与了总额超过146亿美元的欺诈计划，这一数字是此前纪录的两倍多。
但奥兹的策略引发了褒贬不一的评价。
民主党州长和左翼政策专家表示，他故意将目标对准蓝色州，这是一种政治策略，并对他的说法提出了质疑。
例如，奥兹曾提出一项惊人指控：2025年的某个时段，纽约州有超过500万医疗补助计划受益人——即总参保人数的四分之三——接受了个人护理服务。
纽约州进步智库财政政策研究所的卫生政策主任迈克尔·金努坎仔细研究数据后发现，医保与医疗补助服务中心很可能将每月接受该项服务的所有参保人员累计相加，而非仅统计一次个人。
金努坎告诉CNN，这一错误表明奥兹对他所指控存在欺诈的项目了解甚少。
“这里的目的并非打击欺诈或督促纽约州更好地打击欺诈，”他说道，“他们想要削减联邦开支。”
一个多月后，奥兹和医保与医疗补助服务中心承认了这一错误，称实际人数约为45万受益人。
不过，波托马克律师事务所合伙人德里克·亚当斯表示，奥兹关于纽约州社交成人日托项目存在猖獗欺诈的说法是正确的——包括付钱给老年人让他们谎称参加了服务，但实际上并未提供任何服务。他很高兴奥兹提高了人们对这一问题的认识，因为这一问题损害了像他的客户这样的合法服务提供商的利益。
“政府需要在这一问题上采取更多行动，”亚当斯说道，“相关执法行动实在太少了。”
在加利福尼亚州，临终关怀行业对奥兹的努力表示欢迎，称相关工作还有待加强。加州审计署2022年的一份临终关怀机构报告发现，“该州薄弱的监管体系为大规模欺诈和滥用行为创造了机会”，并指出了与奥兹相同的诸多担忧。
加州临终关怀与姑息治疗协会主席希拉·克拉克表示，该州当年已停止向新的临终关怀服务提供商发放执照，但部分现有机构仍在实施欺诈。
去年，克拉克向医保与医疗补助服务中心官员提供了潜在欺诈的相关信息。她称这些官员“非常好奇且考虑周全”，他们迅速采取行动，将被欺诈性参保的医保受益人移出临终关怀服务范围，使他们得以恢复常规医保覆盖。
“他们的执法行动颇具力度，产生了切实影响，”她说道。
奥兹在4月的Politico医疗峰会上表示，医保与医疗补助服务中心已在加利福尼亚州关停了450家临终关怀和家庭护理机构的联邦资金。
奥兹的行动符合医保与医疗补助服务中心应有的作为：保护医保和医疗补助计划，确保联邦资金得到合理使用，保守派智库帕拉贡研究所所长布莱恩·布拉泽说道。
“他所做的一切，就是明确指出部分项目存在的问题，并表明我们需要加以整改，”曾在首届特朗普政府担任卫生政策顾问的布拉泽说道。
尽管如此，一些专家仍质疑奥兹的方法是否是打击欺诈的最佳途径，称联邦政府应与各州合作，而非威胁它们、中断或威胁扣留其联邦配套资金。乔治敦大学的施奈德表示，这种方式并不能让项目更好地运转。
曾在医保与医疗补助服务中心负责医疗补助计划诚信问题的施奈德认为，将焦点放在欺诈问题上，是特朗普政府转移民众注意力的手段，目的是让人们不去关注共和党去年通过的大规模医疗体系削减法案。
“提及欺诈是败坏（医疗补助计划）声誉的手段，”他说道，“这是一项更长期战略的一部分，旨在削弱民众对该计划的支持。”
奥兹则坚称，他热爱医疗补助计划，希望确保有需要医疗服务的人群能够获得救治。
“如果你热爱某样东西，你就会保护它，”他在Politico峰会上说道。
How Dr. Oz became Trump’s Medicare and Medicaid fraud fighter
2026-05-04T10:00:51.552Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/04/politics/dr-oz-trump-medicare-medicaid-fraud
Dr. Mehmet Oz built his reputation as “America’s Doctor” by dispensing easy-to-follow medical advice on TV.
Now, as a top health official in the Trump administration, he’s harnessing his charisma and TV skills to send a different message: that Medicare and Medicaid are riddled with fraud, adding to the cost of the massive public healthcare programs.
With a camera crew still in tow, he’s going on-site in multiple, mostly Democratic-led, states to film video after video calling out improper and questionable spending. He’s also filmed himself tagging along with armed federal agents raiding allegedly fraudulent healthcare providers.
The crusade has not only endeared Oz to Donald Trump but also made him a top lieutenant in the president’s quest to root out wasteful spending in federal social programs.
The highly produced videos, viewed millions of times on social media, are a big part of messaging aimed at convincing voters that Trump is fulfilling his campaign promise to address Americans’ healthcare costs.
Best known for frequent “Oprah” appearances that parlayed into the long-running “The Dr. Oz Show,” he was tapped by Trump last year to be administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS.
Since then, Oz has built a reputation as a steady voice in the Trump administration’s sprawling health apparatus, which has undergone dramatic upheaval with downsizing and policy changes, including some that have been questioned by mainstream medicine. Oz also has taken a leading role in negotiating lower drug prices with more than a dozen manufacturers.
But experts have questioned Oz’s claims that there are many billions of dollars in fraudulent spending to slash in public health insurance programs, many of which cover the most vulnerable Americans. They warn the effort may be aimed at cutting federal spending even when it’s not warranted, while undermining a critical 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,” said Andy Schneider, a research professor at Georgetown University and former CMS senior adviser during 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 told CNN that Oz has been a key part of the fraud 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 said.
Not long after Trump won the presidency in 2024, some of his top allies in the healthcare world convened at Oz’s mansion in Palm Beach, Florida, where they sat around a dinner table discussing how they were going to fix healthcare.
Oz, now-Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a cohort of “Make America Healthy Again” supporters, and a handful of officials from the first Trump administration cycled through the beachfront mansion, discussing goals like how to tackle perceived corruption across the healthcare system.
It was a sort of “healthcare Hyannis Port,” according to Michael Caputo, a former health official from the first Trump administration, who was in attendance.
Current and former Trump officials who spoke to CNN described a cost-cutting, fraud-finding crusade that they believe will resonate with voters ahead of the midterm elections — and Oz’s efforts are being seen in a positively within the administration. He is a central player on Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force.
There is a sense that “if things are going to get done, they’re likely going to get done through CMS,” said 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 large retirement community 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 said.
And Oz has taken on the fraud-fighting mantle with gusto.
Minutes after being sworn in, he was already railing against alleged criminals stealing from vulnerable Americans and from taxpayers in healthcare programs.
“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 said, addressing Trump.
Oz estimates that fraud, waste and abuse in Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act and the Children’s Health Insurance Program total $100 billion. His efforts largely focus on areas that have seen large increases in billing or in providers participating in the programs.
At the heart of his anti-fraud battle are social media videos and letters to governors with demands for information about their Medicaid programs. The missives take an adversarial tone, blaming state leaders for not doing enough, requiring responses within weeks and threatening to act.
In April, he announced that CMS has asked all 50 states to submit plans on how they will revalidate Medicaid providers in areas deemed high risk. States will have 30 days to comply, making sure that the providers are legitimate, deliver the services they are being paid for and do it the right way.
In one of his initial actions earlier this year, Oz announced CMS would temporarily withhold $259 million in federal matching funds for Minnesota until the state can prove that its Medicaid providers weren’t fraudulent and that some individuals served have the proper immigration status. Last week, he followed up by temporarily withholding another $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 adult daycare and home-care programs funded by Medicaid in New York and California’s hospice and home-care services providers.
Oz has also questioned payments for autism services for children in Maine, and, in the only red state on his public shaming list, blasted fraud committed by medical equipment providers in South Florida.
In one action-packed https://x.com/DrOzCMS/status/2045251869627269307?s=20 last month, Oz narrates a SWAT team raid against a California couple charged by the Justice Department with defrauding Mediare by billing for services they did not provide.
“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 toward the raid team. “That stops today.”
The couple seized in the video were two of seven medical practitioners and hospice operators arrested or charged with Medicaid fraud in the enforcement action.
Oz has also traveled around the country — including to Minneapolis, Southern California, New York City, Florida and Nevada — to take viewers to sites where he alleges fraud is occurring.
In another https://x.com/DrOzCMS/status/2033955189141737593?s=20, filmed in South Florida, which he calls “the hotbed of durable medical equipment supplier fraud,” Oz claims there are more suppliers than McDonald’s in the area. One alleged perpetrator tried to flee on a Jet Ski with several hundred thousand dollars in a backpack, he says, as the video shows a man with a backpack on a Jet Ski.
These videos are among the well over a dozen that Oz has posted to his social media accounts this year. He has also appeared on numerous news shows and podcasts discussing the issue.
Criticism and praise
To be sure, fraud has long existed in Medicare and Medicaid, primarily perpetrated by providers, not enrollees — whom GOP lawmakers have often targeted. But there’s no data available on the total amount of money lost to fraud in the two programs, and Oz’s claims have been found to be inaccurate at least once.
Prosecutions give an inkling of the extent of the problem. Medicaid Fraud Control Units, which operate in all states, recovered $1.2 billion in criminal fraud convictions in fiscal year 2025, according to the Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General. (Total Medicaid spending that year was $1 trillion.)
The effort to use data to find billing patterns that could be indicative of fraud predates the Trump administration. CMS estimates that it stopped $11.9 billion in potentially fraudulent Medicare payments between fiscal years 2022 and 2024, according to a recent report from the Government Accountability Office. Under President Joe Biden, some action was taken — for example Medicare officials told the accountability office that the data helped them halt more than $4 billion in payments for supplies that were billed but never delivered.
Prosecutions for healthcare fraud are common. Last year, the Justice Department announced it had charged 324 defendants for their alleged participation in more than $14.6 billion in fraud schemes, more than double the previous record.
But Oz’s tactics have met with mixed reviews.
Democratic governors and left-leaning policy experts say he is deliberately targeting blue states in a political ploy and are challenging his claims.
For example, one of Oz’s eye-popping accusations was that more than 5 million Medicaid beneficiaries in New York — or three-quarters of the total number enrolled — received personal care services during part of 2025.
Michael Kinnucan, health policy director at the progressive Fiscal Policy Institute in New York, looked closely at the data and determined that CMS likely added up all the enrollees who receive this service month after month, rather than counting individuals only once.
The error shows that Oz has a weak grasp of the programs he’s accusing of fraud, Kinnucan told CNN.
“The effort here is not to fight fraud or force New York to do a better job of fighting fraud,” he said. “They want to cut federal spending.”
More than a month later, Oz and CMS acknowledged the mistake, saying that the actual number was about 450,000 beneficiaries.
However, Oz’s claims of rampant fraud in social adult daycare programs in New York — including paying seniors to say they are attending but not actually providing any services — are spot on, said Derek Adams, a partner at Potomac Law Group. He is happy that Oz is raising awareness of the issue, which hurts legitimate providers like his clients.
“The government needs to do more on the issue,” Adams said. “There have been far, far too few actions.”
In California, the hospice industry has welcomed Oz’s efforts, saying more needs to be done. In a 2022 report on hospice agencies, the state’s auditor found that “the State’s weak controls have created the opportunity for large-scale fraud and abuse” and highlighted many of the same concerns as Oz.
The state stopped issuing new licenses to hospice providers that year, but some of the existing ones are still committing fraud, said Sheila Clark, CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association.
Last year, Clark provided information on potential fraud to CMS officials, whom she described as very inquisitive and thoughtful. They worked quickly to remove from hospice care Medicare beneficiaries who were fraudulently enrolled — allowing them to regain their regular Medicare coverage.
“Their enforcement actions have got teeth, and they are having real impact,” she said.
CMS has shut down federal funding for 450 hospices and home healthcare agencies in California, Oz said at Politico’s Health Care Summit in April.
Oz’s actions reflect what CMS should be doing to protect Medicare and Medicaid and ensure federal funds are being spent appropriately, said 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,” said Blase, who worked as a health policy adviser in Trump’s first term.
Still, some experts question whether Oz’s methods are the best way to combat fraud, saying the federal government should partner with states rather than bully them and disrupt or threaten their federal matching funds. That’s not the way to make the program work better, said Schneider of Georgetown University.
Schneider, who advised on Medicaid integrity issues at CMS, argues the focus on fraud is a way for the Trump administration to shift the Americans’ attention away from the sweeping healthcare cuts Republicans enacted last year.
“Invoking fraud is a way to degrade [Medicaid’s] reputation,” he said. “This is part of a longer-term strategy to weaken popular support for the program.”
Oz has contended that he loves Medicaid and wants to make sure that people who need health services can access them.
“If you love something, you protect it,” he said at Politico’s summit.