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Dr. Mehmet Oz: Up to $4 Billion in Health Care Fraud in California
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By Jan Jekielek
1/17/2026Updated: 1/18/2026

“Minnesota … is just the tip of the iceberg,” says Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Minnesota has become the epicenter of several overlapping fraud investigations of childcare programs, small business pandemic loans, and Medicaid services. Earlier this month, Dr. Oz traveled to Minnesota to tour suspected fraud sites and meet with whistleblowers and announced that over $2 billion in annual Medicaid funding might be withheld.

“What we’re seeing in Minnesota, which is billions of dollars of fraud that hurts our most vulnerable people and puts them at risk … is dwarfed by what I saw in California, which is whole-scale cultural malfeasance around health care,” Dr. Oz says.

“The magnitude of fraud there, we believe, is approximating $4 billion just in hospice and home health care,” he says.

Dr. Oz oversees programs that together constitute about one-fourth of the entire U.S. federal budget.

In this episode, he breaks down how the home health care and hospice systems are being exploited on a massive scale and also how Medicare beneficiary numbers are being stolen and weaponized for fraudulent billing schemes.

As the administration approaches its one‑year mark, he reflects on efforts to cut waste, lower drug prices, and transform health in America.

President Donald Trump has recently unveiled his new “Great Healthcare Plan” to lower prices and increase transparency.

“For decades, Americans have been paying three times more than Europeans and other developed nations have been paying for the exact same drugs made in the same facilities,” Dr. Oz says.

Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Jan Jekielek is a senior editor with The Epoch Times, host of the show “American Thought Leaders.” Jan’s career has spanned academia, international human rights work, and now for almost two decades, media. He has interviewed nearly a thousand thought leaders on camera, and specializes in long-form discussions challenging the grand narratives of our time. He’s also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, producing “The Unseen Crisis,” “DeSantis: Florida vs. Lockdowns,” and “Finding Manny.”

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