wavePod

Get Wave AI

Dr. Oz: Medicare fraud & how the stolen billions benefit the Democratic Party - Pod Force One | Wave AI Podcast Notes

Back to Pod Force One

Dr. Oz: Medicare fraud & how the stolen billions benefit the Democratic Party

Pod Force One

Wed Apr 22 2026

Summary

Pod Force One – Episode Summary

Episode Title: Dr. Oz: Medicare fraud & how the stolen billions benefit the Democratic Party
Host: Miranda Devine (New York Post)
Guest: Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for Medicare & Medicaid
Date: April 22, 2026

Episode Overview

In this revelatory episode, Dr. Mehmet Oz, Administrator for Medicare and Medicaid, sits down with Miranda Devine to expose the scale and mechanisms of Medicare and Medicaid fraud, its origins, how criminal and state actors—foreign and domestic—take advantage, and the indirect political repercussions—especially the role of Democratic-leaning states in perpetuating fraud. Dr. Oz details his agency’s battle with widespread organized theft, the complex web of interests that benefit, and offers solutions, including a major push for interagency cooperation and reform. He also touches on public health, personal medical responsibility, and his experiences working with President Trump.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Nature and Scale of Medicare/Medicaid Fraud

Historic Responsibility: Dr. Oz describes working at the center of American healthcare delivery, overseeing a massive chunk of federal spending, guided by the moral imperative to protect society’s most vulnerable: children, the elderly, and those “living hauntingly in the shadows.” (00:28)
Systemic Exploitation: Fraud has increased due to “shysters” and sophisticated organized criminals, many of whom are foreign nationals or working for foreign governments (e.g., Cuban, Russian, Chinese groups). The Covid pandemic, with its expedited emergency funding, worsened exploitation and taught people "they could steal from the federal government and they wouldn't get caught." (02:12)

2. Personal Care Services: Fraud Hotspot & Political Patronage

Personal Care as Jobs Program: In states like New York and California, personal care is the number one government-paid job, with little oversight. Many providers are family or close associates of the patient, making fraud easier and harder to detect. (05:04)
Unionization and Political Cycles: These workers are targeted for unionization, with union dues recycled into Democratic Party campaigns—a feedback loop of patronage fueled by federal dollars. Dr. Oz calls this "political patronage" and not accidental: "This is not a flaw system. This is a feature of the system for Democrats." (25:42)
Notable Quote:

“We are using federal tax dollars to support the unionization of a class of people that we’re not even sure should be hired. … It’s political patronage.” (07:38)

3. Specific Scams & State Case Studies

Minnesota Autism Fraud: Dr. Oz recounts discovering a textile building (Griggs Building) in Minnesota packed with sham operations, “paying moms of kids who were healthy to lie and say their kids had autism so they could actually get services that were unnecessary," ballooning intended $3 million spending to $400 million. (12:26-15:27)
Hospice Fraud in California/LA: Over one-third of American hospices are in LA county. Many are shells, used for billing fraud. Dr. Oz’s team has shut down over 400 fraudulent hospices in 10 weeks—"hundreds of millions of dollars" siphoned, with no complaints from supposed service providers, underscoring the scam's depth. (17:03)
Foreign & Ethnic Crime Rings: Scams are run by Cuban, Chinese, Russian, and Somali groups, with laundered funds heading overseas. (09:57, 10:28)
Notable Quote:

"If we could just get that money out of the fraudsters and put it into the system, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare trust fund." (08:38)

4. Administrative & Law Enforcement Response

“Honey Badger” Strategy: Dr. Oz wants his agency to be relentless, collaborative, and immune to intimidation, invoking the honey badger as a symbol of tenacity—"When it bites something, it doesn't let go. ... There are some problems that are too important for us to fail, where failure is not an option. I think about fraud that way." (45:14)
Changes Initiated:
- Moratorium on new Durable Medical Equipment suppliers (e.g., wheelchairs, canes, often part of scam billing chains) (08:38)
- Payment deferrals to states with suspicious claims (Minnesota example) (11:45)
- Regular audits, DOJ partnerships, SWAT raids, and payment freezes for suspect services/providers (17:03, 19:17)
- Closer collaboration with Treasury to trace laundered funds (19:17)

5. Political Incentives and Systemic Issues

Voter Registration and Medicaid: Tying Medicaid sign-up to automatic voter registration expands the Democratic base ("a very effective tool to get more voters"). (05:04)
Deliberate Nonchalance: Oz argues Democratic officials have tolerated fraud as a side effect of broader political and patronage goals—"It’s a good thing that you can actually throw money at some of these problems, because some of the benefits are going to be your voters." (25:42)
Immigrant Fraud & Benefits: States like California have diverted billions to provide Medicaid coverage (including dental and vision) to illegal immigrants—sometimes with richer benefits than Medicare seniors. (27:15)
Notable Quote:

"We’re actually giving the illegal immigrants a better deal than our Medicare recipients." (27:15)

6. How Fraud Undermines Social Programs

Real Victims: Fraud exhausts resources for the genuinely needy, eroding public trust and the efficacy of safety nets—"You dilute the care that the kids who truly have autism need." (12:26)
Bipartisan Outrage: Both Republicans and Democrats are becoming increasingly indignant, though for different reasons, as the scope of waste comes to light. (19:17-20:54)

7. Media & Whistleblowing

Media Complicity and Awakening: The mainstream media ignored these issues for years. Whistleblowers (e.g., YouTuber Nick Shirley in MN) were essential for drawing attention and forcing action. "The media has certainly not had this on their radar, but the good news is it’s definitely there now." (22:53)

8. Public Health, Prevention, and Personal Responsibility

Doctor’s Duty & Personal Practice: Dr. Oz discusses lessons from heart surgery, the importance of preventive health, and the role of diet, sleep, and exercise, advocating for simple dietary changes and digital health tools. (36:10)
Notable Quotes:

“If you take care of [your body], it’s gonna last you a long, long time. … The most valuable thing you’ll ever get from your parents is your body.” (37:25) "Dessert is metabolic suicide." (44:15)
Food Systems Reform: Push to revamp school and hospital feeding programs to align with new, evidence-based food pyramids, correcting decades of disinformation. (41:08)
Annual Wellness Exams: Dr. Oz urges listeners to take advantage of free annual Medicare wellness exams and new digital health initiatives. (56:30)

9. Partisanship, Leadership, and Personal Reflections

Dr. Oz’s Political Journey: Clarifies he has always been Republican, motivated by “new ideas” and entrepreneurial energy. Attributes values of honesty and respect to his immigrant surgeon father. (30:54)
Working for President Trump: Describes Trump as “incredibly giving” and “mission-oriented,” praises his focus, responsiveness, and selection of committed staff. (47:12)
On RFK Jr. and Vaccines: Discusses the vaccine debate, supports careful scheduling and parental choice while affirming the value and safety of core vaccines (“let’s use a schedule that seems to work like the Danish schedule”). (52:32)

Memorable Quotes & Moments

On Fraud Scale:

“We think it’s about $100 billion a year.” (08:38, Dr. Oz)
On Political Patronage:

“If you’re going to win an election… you do not want to tolerate fraud. It completely undermines the social safety net of this nation.” (26:50, Dr. Oz)
On Personal Care Fraud:

“It’s diabolically clever, isn’t it?” (08:07, Miranda Devine)
On System Reform (“Honey Badger”):

“When it bites something, it doesn't let go. ... There are some problems that are too important for us to fail.” (45:14, Dr. Oz)
On Food and Health:

“Dessert is metabolic suicide.” (44:15, Dr. Oz)
On Vaccine Policy:

“Let’s use a schedule that seems to work like the Danish schedule. They have almost half the number of shots that we give our children.” (52:32, Dr. Oz)
On Trump’s Health:

“I think President Trump is healthy as a bull.” (49:36, Dr. Oz)

Important Timestamps & Segments

00:28 – Dr. Oz on the morality and responsibility of his agency
02:12 – COVID as the explosion point for fraud and international actors
05:04 – Voter registration as part of Medicaid and political strategy
08:38 – $100 billion estimated annual fraud; durable medical equipment scam
12:26 – Minnesota autism fraud exposé
14:35 – Cultural roots of certain frauds (e.g., Somali corruption traditions)
17:03 – LA hospice fraud; shutting down 400+ hospices
19:17 – Money laundering, foreign criminal partnerships
22:38 – The role of whistleblowers and media coverage
25:42 – Political incentives for tolerating fraud
27:15 – Medicaid funding for illegal immigrants
41:08 – Reforms to American food systems
44:15 – Dr. Oz’s dietary practices
45:14 – “Honey badger” philosophy
47:12 – Working with Donald Trump; leadership style
52:32 – Vaccine policy debate and Danish model
56:30 – Annual wellness checks and digital health

Tone and Language

The conversation is fast-paced, accessible, and tinged with frustration and urgency—Dr. Oz fuses moral gravitas with a combativeness fueled by outrage, highlighting both the tragic and the absurd elements of the system. Miranda Devine’s tone oscillates between incredulity at the cleverness of the scams and clear advocacy for reform. Both attack the issues with clarity; Dr. Oz is unsparing about political and bureaucratic failures but equally unapologetic about his mission to fix them.

Conclusion

This episode is a clarion call outlining not only the scale and complexity of Medicare/Medicaid fraud, but how it is enabled and sometimes politically incentivized within the system. Dr. Oz elucidates both the cost to the nation and a roadmap for reform—rooted in vigilance, transparency, and a “honey badger” refusal to let go.

Practical Takeaway:
For listeners: Be vigilant about fraud. If eligible, get your free Medicare annual wellness exam and use digital health tools. For policymakers: Political patronage in key programs undermines democracy; reform is crucial.

Loading summary...

Transcript

Miranda Devine (0:01)

Doctor Oz, welcome to Pod Force One.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (0:04)

Glad to be with you. I've been listening to you, watching you. Now I get to participate in person.

Miranda Devine (0:08)

Fantastic. And we're here in this wonderful office in the Hubert Humphrey building just very close to the Capitol. Tell us about being here. What's it like to be in this kind of historic place where you are now in charge of I think a quarter of the federal budget with Medicare and Medicaid.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (0:28)

Well, I'll start off by saying it's the best job I have ever had, really. And I've had wonderful jobs. I love being a heart surgeon. I hung up my surgical cleats several years ago when I ran for public office. But I practiced my whole life. Hosting television show was wonderful and great friendships. I. I felt in both cases like I was in the change business. And in this building I feel more than ever that's exactly what I'm able to achieve, which is to get folks to work together to make big changes that are necessary. I don't know if you noticed as you walked into building you gave the name Hubert Humphrey, but there's a quote from him. Yes, engraved in marble. And he speaks, I'll paraphrase that it is the moral obligation of government to take care of those at the dawn of life which are children. And we cover most children in the country through Medicaid. And chip those in the twilight of life which are the seniors, that's Medicare. And those living hauntingly in the shadows, folks who are struggling, people with substance use issues, people who are depressed, people just have fallen, they have trouble getting up again. And the ability of any great people to take care of their most vulnerable, which is what defines a great nation. And we are great people. We're going to do that is incumbent upon us here at Medicare and Medicaid, which is why if we don't get it right or if people take advantage of the system, which is always possible, then you're taking away something that all of us as a nation have agreed to give folks who are vulnerable. And we've got to fix that problem.

Miranda Devine (1:51)

I mean that's exactly what's happened is that shysters have taken advantage crooks and frauds and you've now confronting that multi billion dollar fraud schemes seems like organized theft. What are you actually doing about it and why has it got so bad?

Dr. Mehmet Oz (2:12)

Well, you ask an important question. How do we get here? A lot of it started in Covid because we gave away a lot of money in an urgent situation and we taught people they could steal from the federal government and they wouldn't get caught. When I say people, I'm talking about oftentimes foreigners and foreign governments. It's not just Americans perpetrating this fraud. And so during that era of especially when you couldn't go out of your house and there was a lot of opportunities to make money, people began to learn more about where the opportunities are to take advantage of the US healthcare system. Because unlike other parts of the US government, we are a massive payer. As you point out, we give out about $1.8 trillion a year, but we have to have beneficiary numbers to do that, which means everyone has a little code that a fraudster could get their hands on and pierce the system. So think of us as a massive hippo and we're wandering around the savannah and all you need to do is get a spear and put into our side and you can bring us down. And if you put enough spears into us, you can start to pull out significant amounts of money. And. And as you began to see folks weaponize this process and as they get greedier, which they will always do, you begin to realize that if they're able to steal from you, the beneficiary, they'll also hurt you. They don't care about you. And much of what's happening now is not just a financial aberration, it's morally reprehensible. They're taking away livelihoods, they're stealing people's health, and they're completely void of any moral hygiene in this process. They were perfectly willing to leave autistic children without care to take people who are at the end of their life, supposed to be in hospice and let them wilt away without care, stealing of course, their insurance along the way and the money that would have gone to them. And so I've asked our agency to become like honey badgers. And I use this same storyline when I was making the show. If you really want to thrive, if you want to be the best at the business, you've got to be tough and resistant to criticism because people who have money will come after you. Not all the people involved in this fraud are small time hucksters. Some of them are very wealthy, sophisticated people who know how to play the game. And I'm seeing evidence of this in New York, I see evidence of it in California, other states as well. And we should walk through this because the real question that you should be asking yourself is why would anybody, anybody, Democrat, Republican, why would anybody allow this

Dr. Mehmet Oz (5:04)

Well, it's federal law that if I sign you up for Medicaid, which again, is the insurance coverage for folks who are not making enough money to buy their own insurance, I also have to give you the ability to sign up to vote. So it is a very effective tool to get more voters. But there's also an element of unionizing some of these workers. And that has become more a concern for me as I've gotten more into some of the problems with personal care services. So let me take a step back and explain what's actually happening within the healthcare system that allows this fraud to happen. Because it's not fraud of hernia operations or brain treatments. This is fraud generally of services that your family would have provided for you in the past. But because we have decided to take on some of these societal challenges to provide the services your family would normally offer, we'll drive you to the doctor's office, we'll take you home from an operation, take care of you. Well, we'll hire a member of your family or someone living with you to carry the groceries upstairs. So it's a jobs program. And in some states, New York's a good example. The number one job in New York is not retail, which you would think it would be. It's personal care services paid for by the government. Paid for by the government, directed by the patient. So I'll say it very simply. You get up in the morning, you feel slightly confused. Maybe you're not in your best that day. You don't want to get the groceries upstairs. In order to theoretically keep you from going to a nursing home or to a hospital, the state says we're going to, on behalf of the federal government, pay for someone often who lives with you or near you to come take care of you. Well, in theory, that sounds great, but it's not licensed. There's no professional involved. The patient and the person they're hiring might be closely linked, so they might be in cahoots. So there's not a lot of quality control. And next thing you know, 500,000 people in New York state are providing personal care services. Even more people are providing personal care services in California. Now, think about this. These folks in California in particular, there's no financial intermediary. It's the county government literally saying, you know what, you look like you might need some help, fine. Whatever you ask for you're going to get. Now the people that they hire to do this work, they're approached by the unions as they join the union. They pay dues. Those dues are rotated back into partisan politics, often of course, supporting the Democratic party. And then I start asking myself, well, you know, how is this possible in New York State? Literally, I have contracts between unions at 1199 and the potential fiscal intermediaries, the guys who are supposed to run these personal care services saying, hey listen, we have the right and we want to make a contract with you to get the names of all the people who sign up to help in the personal care services. And if I get their names and they did that, by the way, they're sending notes now to these folks trying to unionize them. So we're using federal tax dollars to support the unionization of a class of people that we're not even sure should be hired. Certainly in that magnitude, it's political patronage.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (12:26)

Well, the Griggs building is this massive building that was used for textiles. There's. There's tons of small little offices in there. And apparently there were many, many, many of these fraudsters running different operations, autism being a big one, but other processes, you know, these manufactured businesses of that nature. So the first question I had was, who owns the building? Like, the person owning the building must have some clue there's a problem going on here. Then I tried to walk towards the building. I was immediately surrounded by Minnesotans. I guess they were just local protesters trying to block us from even looking at the building, really, which I would think you'd want me to do. I'm not going there to arrest anybody. I'm trying to find out what's actually going on inside the building. And as we began to look into this whole problem in Minnesota, in particular with autism, and I'll focus on it because it's so reprehensible. They were paying moms of kids who were healthy to lie and see their kids had autism so they could actually get services that were unnecessary. So, again, you're bribing the mother, paying her money that, by the way, saddles the child even though they're healthy, with the diagnosis of autism, which they're going to have to lift that load for a long time. Then you have people who are recent high school graduates being put into the place of babysitting these healthy children, again under the guise that they're autistic. But here's the unfortunate problem. If you have an autistic child and needs services, which is a real issue and you need help, and that's great. And we will, as a society, pay into a tool to make sure that happens for you to a fund. But if every mom in the block says their child is autistic, you can't take care of all those kids. And more importantly, you dilute the care that the kids who truly have autism need. And so we witnessed in Minnesota, and we're seeing it elsewhere as well, a complete corruption of the system. We call it fraud or waste of abuse, but it's fundamentally a corruption of. Of the very foundation of the social safety net.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (25:02)

There's a lot of reasons for Democratic leaders not to take this problem seriously. It goes against the grain of what they've been preaching, which is that we can give this service away, whatever it might be, and it's gonna be safely delivered and everyone's gonna be happy when it occurs. Instead, what you're really doing is you're farming a lot of these problems. You're making the problems actually worse by throwing money at them. Because bad actors get involved and get engaged and they can cause real, real damage to the system. But the political patronage that you've outlined is fundamentally important for folks watching right now to understand. This is not a flaw system. This is a feature of the system for Democrats. It's a good thing that you can actually enroll more people on Medicaid than should be on Medicaid, because you cannot be able to get them to vote. It's a good thing that you can actually throw money at some of these problems, because some of the benefits of benefit are going to be your voters. And if you have a jobs program masquerading as a Medicaid support program, personal care services, that's not bad for your state either, then you bring the union employee, you know, unionized employees on board as well. It's a perfect storm. It's just what you want. And I just want to lay this out as cleanly as I can, because when I first started getting involved and understanding the magnitude of the fraud, I was purely focused on how it was that these guys got so good at stealing money from the federal government. Only after I delve into it a little deeper that I appreciate that it wasn't a flaw that we were letting this happen. It was a feature that was tolerated by a prior administration, not just here in Washington, but across the country. And we don't want that to repeat itself. If you're going to win an election in the future, I don't care what party you are, you do not want to tolerate fraud. It completely undermines the social safety net

Dr. Mehmet Oz (27:15)

I do know. And since you bring up illegal immigrants, I actually think what we're witnessing in Medicaid fraud, Medicare fraud, is this election's an analogy to illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants came in because the Democratic Party at the time was not willing to deal with the problem. They just looked the other way. They averted their. Their. Their glance, their gaze. And so they let a problem happen, hoping that no one would notice or hold them accountable for it. It's the exact same thing we're seeing now in many ways within healthcare. Purposely looking the other way, hoping no one notices. It brings jobs, it brings money, it brings voters. It brings all the things you sort of want. Sort of like immigration might have been able to do in the past. But when it comes to illegal immigrants getting healthcare services, it's also a good example of how it's been shockingly easy to steal money from the federal government. Let me just lay this out for everybody. You pay federal taxes. No matter where you are in this country, you're paying federal taxes. The state of California is taking those federal taxes and buying their illegal immigrants health care benefits, including, by the way, vision and dental. Now, I'm not against giving people vision support and dental support for illegal immigrants, maybe even. But if you're not giving it to Medicare beneficiaries, older Americans in the rest of the country do not get vision and dental. No, they have to pay for it themselves. So we're actually giving the illegal immigrants a better deal than our Medicare recipients. And In California, it's $1.6 billion just in the last year that they have siphoned to illegal immigrants that they've pretty much acknowledged because they're paying us back. Now, there are several other states that are also using their state Medicaid plans to wrongly support illegal immigrant elective procedures. If you have an emergency, you're going to have a baby, you're in an accident, you're getting a career, it doesn't matter if you're a legal immigrant as is. You know, you need to respect that part of the health care system's ability to save lives. We don't want people dying. We just want people to honestly get the care they deserve and pay for it. If you come here illegally, do not ask. If you, and you're in California, do not ask Texas or New Mexico taxpayers to foot the bill of your largesse. And although the California leadership, Governor, Governor Newsom has said that, you know, we're mean for not paying for their illegal immigrants to get free health care, as soon as the federal government said we're not paying for it anymore, guess what? California did, they cut those benefits. So it's great to be nice and, and be very kind and have largesse when it's not your cash. But if you're inviting people to the dinner that you're going to serve, you need to pay the bill.

Dr. Mehmet Oz (37:32)

Well, an unhealthy heart's bloated. It actually is fatty. It has fat layers on top of it. It looks slovenly almost, and it doesn't have that tight Spherical. Look, a healthy heart, it doesn't compress blood the way a balloon that's deflating would expel air. It's literally like. You know how you take a towel and you wring it to get the water out. That's how the heart beats. It wrings the water out. That ringing motion, that powerful, like a python coiled in the chest, twisting away, that's what it's supposed to look like. And it doesn't look like that when it's been diseased, which is, I always thought, especially because I was doing heart transplants for much of my career, your body's rejecting you. Like the most sacred thing inside of you. You know, this most poetic of all of our organs, the heart, the bleeding heart, stone heart, cold heart. This. This organ had rejected you because you hadn't taken care of it. So the thought that I could address that by just preventing the problem. The first. The first place was, to me, a huge opportunity. But the real driving force is my wife, Lisa, who would listen to me lament the situation of whatever patient I would try to take care of that day. And she'd say, stop complaining and moaning and groaning. Go out there and tell people what you know. Leave the ivory tower of Columbia University and go out there and teach. America's not getting the message because you're not giving it to them, right? And so that's a pretty healthy challenge. So I did just that. I began working on the Oprah Winfrey show, began writing books, as you point out. I learned a lot about how to popularize important information. How do you deliver a message in a way that makes people feel like they could do it? My goodness. I mean, now that I get it, now that I have the epiphany of what my body really is, about how divine it really is, now that I know I can control my body, I can change the world outside of it. That's sort of the mindset that we wanted people to have, by the way. We have a children's foundation that does just that. We raised about $100 million for it. We're in schools all over the country teaching that basic same message. You're given this incredible gift. The most valuable thing you'll ever get from your parents is your body. And so you should take care of it like it's a special, beautiful entity, because you only get one. And if you take care of it, it's gonna last you a long, long time. And part of the focus for me here at Medicare and Medicaid is to think differently about how we invest in people's health. That's why we're so focused on some of the technology tools that we believe can better the state of humanity. But if we take the Maha movement, which is fundamentally eat real food that comes out of the ground looking the way it looks when you eat it, get activity so you get breathy, a little heavy breathing at least once a day in any way you can do it. Make sure you're focused on your sleep, which means you have to deal with the stress, but that prevents your sleep issues. Those fairly simple, age old, proven tools. And of course we've made it hard to do that in America. So if you make it easy to do those things, you're actually fulfilling the Maha destiny. But let me shock you with a number. If we can invest this country's resources in a way that improves the health of all the people who can hear my voice right now, and make our people so healthy that they want to work one extra year, just strive to do one more year of effort to improve your lot in life, the job you're doing, produce more value for the country. The value of that to the GDP of America is almost a trillion dollars. I mean, it's a massive lift to our society if we can get people to be healthy, which is why this is so important. We are spending twice as much money as any other country per capita on our people's healthcare because we're so sick.