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The error, one of at least a few misrepresentations in its description of the program, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican administration\u2019s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were based on faulty findings. It also reflected a common criticism that\u2019s been made of Trump\u2019s second administration \u2014 that it tends to attack first and confirm the facts later.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it\u2019s really slapdash,\u201d said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis<\/a><\/span> called attention to the Trump administration\u2019s inaccurate claim.<\/p>\n The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Oz<\/a><\/span>, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a social media video and in a letter to New York\u2019s Democratic governor announcing the fraud investigation. <\/p>\n Oz claimed that New York\u2019s Medicaid program last year provided some 5 million people with personal care services, which assist people in need with basic activities like bathing, grooming and meal preparation. That would add up to nearly three-fourths of the state\u2019s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.<\/p>\n \u201cThat level of utilization is unheard of,\u201d Oz said in the video, adding in his post that New York needs to \u201ccome clean about its Medicaid program.\u201d<\/p>\n But the real number of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000, or between 6% and 7% of total enrollees, CMS spokesman Chris Krepich told The Associated Press this week in the agency\u2019s first public acknowledgment of the error. He said the agency misidentified New York\u2019s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.<\/p>\n \u201cCMS is committed to ensuring its analyses fully reflect state-specific billing practices and will continue to work closely with New York to validate data and strengthen program integrity oversight,\u201d he said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n Krepich said the probe was ongoing as the administration still has concerns with New York\u2019s oversight of personal care services and the Medicaid program and is reviewing the state\u2019s response to last month\u2019s letter. CMS had raised other flags about New York\u2019s program, including that it spends more per beneficiary and per resident than the average state, has high personal care spending and employs so many personal care aides that the job category is now the largest in the state.<\/p>\n Health analysts said the state\u2019s high spending reflected both high costs for services in New York and a policy choice to provide robust at-home care. Cadence Acquaviva, senior public information officer for the New York Department of Health, called Oz\u2019s initial mischaracterizations \u201ca targeted attempt to obscure the facts.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNew York State remains committed to protecting and preserving vital Medicaid programs that deliver high-quality services to New Yorkers who depend on them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, \u201cThe initial claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cGovernor Hochul has been clear that New York has zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse in Medicaid, or any other state programs, and will continue her efforts to root out bad actors, protect taxpayer dollars, and safeguard the critical programs that New Yorkers rely on,\u201d spokesperson Nicolette Simmonds said. <\/p>\n The Trump administration\u2019s investigation into New York comes as it has similarly approached at least four other states, including California<\/a><\/span>, Florida<\/a><\/span>, Maine and Minnesota, with investigations into potential health care fraud. The anti-fraud effort appears to be expanding as voters in the upcoming midterm elections say they\u2019re concerned about affordability. <\/p>\n Trump last month signed an executive order to create an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance. As part of that project, Vance announced the administration would temporarily halt $243 million in Medicaid funding<\/a><\/span> to Minnesota over fraud concerns, a move over which the state has since sued<\/a><\/span>.<\/p>\n Kinnucan, the analyst with expertise in New York\u2019s Medicaid program, said he\u2019s concerned that the Trump administration\u2019s adversarial approach to targeting fraud in some states \u201cpoliticizes\u201d a conversation that should be a team effort.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want to think collaboratively among all the stakeholders in the program about how we can actually fix it,\u201d Kinnucan said. \u201cWe don\u2019t want to have fraud be this political football.\u201d<\/p>\n In his video, Oz made at least two other claims about New York that Medicaid advocates and beneficiaries say distorted the facts.<\/p>\n In one instance, he said the state recently made its screening for personal care eligibility \u201cmore lenient by allowing problems like being \u2018easily distracted\u2019 to qualify for a personal care assistant.\u201d<\/p>\n Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said the opposite was true \u2014 that the state in a rule change that went into effect last September instead made its program requirements more stringent. She said being \u201ceasily distracted\u201d doesn\u2019t appear anywhere among them.<\/p>\n Krepich said the administrator was referring to whether New York\u2019s standard for personal care services was \u201csufficiently rigorous.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen standards are overly permissive, it risks diverting resources away from individuals with the highest levels of need and placing long-term pressure on the sustainability of the Medicaid program,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Oz in the video also referred to personal care services as \u201csomething that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.\u201d<\/p>\n Kathleen Downes, a 33-year-old who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy and uses personal care services in New York\u2019s Nassau County, said she was offended by the notion that all Medicaid beneficiaries have family members who are willing and able to help.<\/p>\n Downes, who has been disabled since birth and needs personal care help for things like showering, using the toilet and eating, said she hires both her mother and outside assistants for personal care services, so her aging mother doesn\u2019t have to take on those tasks full time. She said her mother did the labor unpaid for years, precluding her from pursuing other career opportunities.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free forever,\u201d Downes said. \u201cAnd that\u2019s not feasible for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.\n <\/p><\/div>\n window.fbAsyncInit = function() { };<\/p>\n (function(d, s, id){ NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 President Donald Trump\u2019s administration this week acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York\u2019s Medicaid program, a glaring mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states. The error, one of at least a few misrepresentations … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Trump-administration-admits-error-in-New-York-health-care-fraud.com2Fce2F162F07a56359ab18ba2a9bb08ea462832F929b6d2f18374be4a44d.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26877,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26875\/revisions\/26877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}New York probe is part of a larger crackdown<\/h2>\n
Oz made other claims New York advocates say are inaccurate<\/h2>\n
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