Despite Donald Trump’s troubled history with fraud allegations, the president and his workforce have spent the previous couple of months leaning into the concept that they’re properly suited to a campaign in opposition to the misuse of public sources. To that finish, the White House has appointed a “fraud czar,” and in Trump’s current State of the Union handle, he announced what he described as a “war on fraud.”
More lately, the administration additionally shaped a fraud “task force,” to be led by Vice President JD Vance, that Trump said would goal fraud “primarily in those Blue States,” together with New York.
The administration has by no means even tried to supply proof to substantiate claims that fraud is extra widespread in Democratic-led states, however the president has by no means been particularly in proof.
As these efforts took form, Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, launched a salvo that appeared quite critical. Last month, the previous tv character stated New York’s Medicaid program final yr offered private care providers, protecting issues akin to bathing and meal preparation, to roughly 5 million individuals.
“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz stated in a social media video, in which he levied the allegations. He added that New York must “come clean about its Medicaid program.”
Taken at face worth, Oz’s accusations may need appeared quite critical. There are 6.8 million New Yorkers enrolled in Medicaid, and if 5 million of them acquired private care providers final yr, it would elevate reputable questions.
But the CMS chief was flawed. The quantity wasn’t 5 million, it was 450,000. Oz was off by a issue of 11. (He additionally made false claims about eligibility for this system. The video he posted stays on-line as of this writing.)
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Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowWeblog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s additionally the bestselling creator of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”
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