Oz doubles down as Minnesota sues over Medicaid freeze
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Oz speaks about combatting fraud last week. Photo: Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images
The Trump administration is redoubling threats to crack down on fraud in state Medicaid programs, even as it faces a new lawsuit from Minnesota over its decision to freeze hundreds of millions of dollars owed to the state.
The big picture: CMS administrator Mehmet Oz said at an event on Tuesday that the agency is "getting strict" on fraud in both Medicaid and Medicare and hinted that the agency could expand efforts to other states.
- Oz and Vice President JD Vance last week announced plans to halt $259 million in Medicaid funding for the state until it took steps to reduce fraud — a move some policy experts said is illegal.
- "What happened in Minnesota — we're seeing in California, we're seeing it in Maine ... New York and we've seen problems in Florida as well," Oz said.
State of play: Minnesota filed a lawsuit in federal court Monday claiming that the Trump administration's decision violates both administrative procedure and congressional spending authority.
- Oz, on the sidelines of a Tuesday event on value-based care, told Axios, "I'm interested to see what specifics they have."
- "It's a difficult challenge when a state doesn't seem to have taken fraud seriously, and we have tons of evidence that that's the case, including whistleblowers on the ground," he said.
- He said he has "an obligation to the federal taxpayer, so I intend to fulfill those obligations."
The funding freeze affects 7% of Minnesota's quarterly Medicaid funding and could force the state to significantly cut back services, officials said.
- "Trump's attempts to look like he's fighting fraud only punish the people and families who most need the high-quality, affordable healthcare that all Minnesotans deserve," Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement.
- The administration used the state's inability to rein in fraud in safety net programs as justification for launching the ICE enforcement surge that targeted the state's Somali community late last year.
