An investigative journalist was in disbelief Friday as President Donald Trump's Medicare chief was caught using wildly inflated numbers to attack a Democratic state — then his own agency admitted the figures were bogus.
A new analysis from investigative journalist Marcy Wheeler flagged that The Associated Press caught Mehmet Oz, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, using fabricated Medicaid numbers to attack New York — and then forced the agency to admit the figures were wrong.
Oz claimed New York's Medicaid program provided personal care services to roughly 5 million people last year, nearly three-quarters of the state's entire Medicaid enrollment.
“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz declared, suggesting the state needed to "come clean."
The actual number was about 450,000 people, roughly 6 to 7 percent of enrollees. CMS admitted to the AP that the agency had "misidentified New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology."
The man Trump appointed to lead his anti-fraud crusade used bogus numbers to manufacture a fraud scandal against a Democratic state.
Wheeler argued this is the entire point. Trump fired eight Inspectors General who had identified $183 billion in actual fraud, much of it from Trump's own COVID relief programs, then launched a splashy new fraud task force staffed with partisan operatives directed at Democratic constituencies.
Meanwhile, Trump has pardoned nearly $2 billion in court-ordered fraud fines and restitution for allies, donors and associates.
"Any fraud but his own," Wheeler concluded.