Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, on Tuesday claimed that the vast majority of Medicaid payments in Maine are based on fraudulent billing.
Speaking in Philadelphia at an anti-fraud press conference, Oz said he was in Maine on Monday investigating home support services for adults with autism. The Justice Department on Tuesday announced the indictments of 19 people for Medicaid fraud in Pennsylvania.
Oz blamed the COVID-19 pandemic for what he said was a rise in Medicaid fraud over the last six years.
“COVID appears to have unleashed massive fraud through grifters because criminals knew the federal government would not follow up on the money it was sending out.”
“We told the world we were open to fraud and they could start harpooning us with their spears. No mas. No more,” Oz said.
Oz said he was shown statistics indicating “90% of services billed and paid for — in Maine in particular — where there is no justifiable backup for. Nine out of 10 services, you can’t justify they should have happened.”
He didn’t give details to support his claim but made reference to people inventing hours, inventing a disability and inventing a workforce to facilitate fraudulent billing “at the expense of people who depend on these programs,” deceptions that aligned with Tuesday’s Pennsylvania indictments.
The Maine Wire, the media arm of the conservative Maine Policy Institute, met with Oz in Maine on Monday.
A two-and-a-half-minute video filmed outside of the Paradise Residential Services building in Portland, shows Maine Wire reporter Jon Featherston speculating to Oz about what went wrong at the facility. The autism caregiver organization had its MaineCare contract terminated earlier this year over health and safety violations discovered through a Maine Department of Health and Human Services investigation.
