Authored by Troy Myers via The Epoch Times,
Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz announced in the Oval Office on Tuesday that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is deferring an additional $1.2 billion in Medicaid funding from California over concerns of widespread fraud in its state healthcare programs.
The federal government's withholding of Medicaid payments to California now totals more than $3.3 billion.
"They just got the note, and we're doing that because of the growth of personal care services in California," Oz said.
"California has been growing that program 24 percent in the last three years. That is twice the rate of every other state average in the country. Impossible for us to understand how that could be so."
President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and independent journalist Nick Shirley joined Oz at the Oval Office event on Tuesday.
Trump administration officials credited Shirley for his work in exposing healthcare fraud in Minnesota last December, which launched him into the national spotlight as an independent government watchdog.
"I just was concerned about the well-being of our tax dollars," Shirley said during the White House event. "There's never been an incentive for anyone to ever expose fraud. In fact, when I expose fraud, instead of the mainstream media investigating the fraud, they investigated me, and people actually, in fact, wanted to kill me after I exposed the fraud."
After his video highlighted alleged fraud in Minnesota's daycare programs, Shirley made additional videos in New York and California.
In Oz's announcement Tuesday, he clarified that the deferment affects California's Medicaid payments directed to personal care services.
"Just that one little area where you're paying someone to carry groceries upstairs for your mom, which many of you would carry groceries upstairs for your mom for free, I would think, but in California, they'll pay you a lot of money for it, and it's actually run by the counties," Oz said.
Trump signed an executive order on March 16 to officially create an anti-fraud task force to be headed by Vance.
As part of Tuesday's White House event, Trump and Vance announced a $25 million Fraud Whistleblower Incentive Program (WHIP), designed to reward Americans who help report misuses of U.S. tax dollars.
Under the program, citizens who provide tips that lead to a successful fraud conviction or a significant federal enforcement action are eligible to receive 1 percent of the amount of fraud discovered, Trump said.
The Justice Department will oversee WHIP, and Americans can submit tips online at fraud.gov.
"For the first time ever, there'll be an incentive for people to actually go out and make that change inside their own community," Shirley said about WHIP. "I hope by today, millions of people are empowered inside of the United States to go out and actually make a change inside your own community, and you'll actually be rewarded for saving America money."
Oz announced that the latest action against California's Medicaid program was on behalf of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who said on July 21 that CMS was withholding more than $867 million in Medicaid payments to California.
"Every dollar the federal government allows to be lost to fraud, waste, and abuse is a dollar stolen from American patients and the American taxpayer," Kennedy said at the time. "That's money that should be going to legitimate healthcare."
In May, Vice President JD Vance announced $1.3 billion would be withheld from California's Medicaid payments over potentially fraudulent billing patterns.
"We want to protect these programs for the kids and the families who need them," Vance previously said. "We want to ensure that the American taxpayer isn't getting fleeced."
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has called the withholding of funds politically motivated. His office did not respond to a request for comment about the latest deferment.