Federal officials suspend 800 California hospice and home health providers over alleged Medicare fraud

Federal officials have suspended 800 hospice and home health providers in California after uncovering what the Trump administration describes as a massive Medicare fraud scheme tied to foreign-linked criminal networks that allegedly siphoned more than $1 billion from taxpayers.

Dr. Mehmet Oz, who serves as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator under HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr., and President Donald Trump, said the alleged perpetrators are "weaponized, professional hoodlums" exploiting weaknesses in the nation’s healthcare system.

Oz told "My View with Lara Trump" that the fraud endangers vulnerable patients while draining taxpayer-funded programs. He singled out Los Angeles as a major hotspot, claiming the city alone accounts for nearly one-third of all hospice providers nationwide, a concentration he called "not rational."

"We're shutting down, we believe, half of them because we don't think they're legitimately helping people," Oz said.

Oz said the administration has also deferred more than one billion dollars in federal payments for the last quarter of audits as scrutiny surrounding the alleged widespread abuse intensifies.

"The massive system we have built to provide appropriate healthcare services in America is being defrauded at levels that no one thought imaginable," he said.

"If we could take out the fraud, waste and abuse, we would double the life expectancy of the Medicare Trust Fund," Oz added. "It would be there twice as long for you as it will be now... just by taking the fraud out, not increasing your taxes, not throwing money at it from the government... but actually stopping bad people from corrupting the system."