During an interview, Fox News anchor Bret Baier raised the scope of the issue and its public visibility.
“CMS administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, thanks for doing this. Fraud is the topic of the day, and obviously you’re at the forefront of some of this. Broadly, the American people don’t have a full sense yet of how big a deal this is, right?” Baier said.
Oz responded by outlining the magnitude of fraud affecting federal insurance programs.
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“Well, if you just look at the money that we pay the federal government for insurance, which is for Medicare and Medicaid and Medicaid and related programs, we think there’s about $100 billion of fraud, 100 billion now,” he said.
He said the figure carries broader implications for Americans concerned about the future of Medicare.
“Let me just put that in perspective that folks can anchor on. A lot of Americans who are working are concerned that Medicare won’t be there for them. They worry won’t be solvent,” Oz said.
Oz added that eliminating fraud could significantly extend the program’s viability.
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“If we’re able to take out the fraud in Medicare alone, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare trust fund. It would add years more to the solvency of this program, which would give comfort to everyone working today that it’s going to be there for them,” he said.
Addressing how fraud reached such levels, Oz pointed in part to the federal response during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The question really is, how’d it get so bad, and part of it is covid, because when you start throwing money at problems, you don’t watch where it’s going,” he said.
He added that individuals committing fraud adapted quickly once they identified vulnerabilities.
“And fraudsters learn they can corrupt the system because they never realized it was so easy to steal from the government, then they’ll start to weaponize it and use it in other areas, like Medicare and Medicaid,” Oz said.
Oz also described enforcement actions underway to combat fraud, citing a recent operation.
“We now have it all a government approach. So yesterday, for example, I spent the predawn hours in Los Angeles busting into a swank neighborhood home owned by a doctor and a nurse who had been defrauding the hospice system there for millions of dollars,” he said.
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