Dr Oz delivers fraud warning letters in Queens as federal agents search New York adult day care centers, and California loses 1.2 billion dollars in Medicaid payments

The head of the federal Medicaid program spent Tuesday walking into day care centers in Queens and asking the directors to explain their own attendance sheets.

Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, delivered warning letters in person to Kent Senior Care and Evergreen Adult Day Care in Flushing, accompanied by senior federal health officials, while Fox News Digital went along. The letters told the facilities that their billing practices had raised concerns among federal authorities. The two visits were part of a wider operation on Tuesday in which CMS officials conducted more than 80 visits and delivered warning letters to providers across New York City, and the FBI, the Health and Human Services inspector general, the NYPD and other agencies carried out searches at other locations. Governor Kathy Hochul acknowledged the operation on Tuesday, called it part of a "massive effort to combat fraud and abuse" in Medicaid, and confirmed that state health officials had joined federal and state law enforcement in targeting suspected fraud at social adult day care programs.

At the centers, the argument was arithmetic. At Evergreen, a manager told Oz that 200 seniors visit three days a week and 150 on the other two days. Oz said he could see about 25 people. Seniors were observed entering one center without signing attendance sheets, although people who arrived after Oz and his team appeared were required to sign in. Oz questioned charges tied to attendance and to wheelchairs, and argued that billing discrepancies repeated across hundreds of cases are hard to explain as innocent error. "The numbers don't seem to add up," he said. "The whole experience was suspicious," he told Fox News Digital afterward. Oz said the broader crackdown included arrests, search warrants and moves to stop some operators from billing Medicaid at all, although Fox News Digital did not witness those actions at the two Queens facilities. Kent Senior Care declined to comment. Evergreen Adult Day Care did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

New York was only half of the day's enforcement. At a White House event on Tuesday with President Trump and Vice President JD Vance present, Oz announced that the administration is deferring another 1.2 billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to California while CMS reviews the state's personal care services program, which pays for help given to older adults and people with disabilities in their homes. "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," Oz said. "Impossible for us to understand how that could be, so we are taking major action in California." He argued that California pays people for help that families in other states give for free. The deferral is not a final finding: the review can end with the money paid or permanently cancelled, and California would have to cover any shortfall in the meantime. Oz announced the deferral on the basis of the program's growth rate and did not present specific evidence of fraud in it, as of October 21.