by Sharon Rondeau
(Aug. 5, 2026) — In an interview with Martha MacCallum on Wednesday’s episode of “The Story,” Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz likened the billions of dollars in “fraud” investigators have discovered through the Medicaid and Medicare programs to the former porous borders between the U.S. and neighbors.
Abuse of the U.S. medical system is “very much like the border crisis from two years ago,” Oz told MacCallum. “The one thing that was lacking in closing the border was the will of the federal government to close the border. Once the president wanted the border closed, it was closed.”
According to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol statistics, encounters with illegal aliens at the border with Mexico have dropped exponentially since fiscal year 2024.
MacCallum began the exchange with a clip from a meeting Vice President JD Vance held Wednesday morning with the special task force announced in March by executive order to combat fraud within the U.S. medical system; also in attendance were approximately 20 members of Congress.
According to Vance, $230 billion in fraud has been identified and consequently, $56 billion withheld from distribution.
A former U.S. senator from Ohio, Vance said “this effort will fundamentally always have a limitation unless our colleagues in the House and the Senate are working with us.”
As an example of the fraud uncovered by the task force in conjunction with U.S. attorneys and investigators around the nation, MacCallum played a clip from a press conference held Tuesday in Philadelphia wherein U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania David Metcalf, with Oz by his side, reported that certain individuals were found to have billed for home-care services while they were “on vacation,” incarcerated, “selling drugs” or “jet-setting across the Caribbean and Europe.”
“How big is this problem?” MacCallum asked Oz regarding the revelations.
“Massive,” Oz replied. “The vice president, who has been tackling this with the anti-fraud task force that the president put together, uses an all-of-government approach, which is why you’re seeing us now getting our arms around this problem…All of us want this problem dealt with.”
An individual who Oz said was in the “federal holding area,” or “jail” behind them as Metcalf gave Tuesday’s presser was “theoretically getting care as a home-health care provider from his wife; that was part of the fraud,” Oz said. “And you know what he said? He said everyone’s doing it. ‘If you’re going to arrest me, you going to have to arrest everyone in Philadelphia,'” Oz characterized his exchange with the individual.
“The reality is all these grifters have come from other areas: drugs and other criminal entities, because we’ve invited them in to the federal government to steal our money, and it started during COVID, when a lot of money was thrown against the wall and a lot of it was taken, and the prior administration didn’t go after it…” Oz elaborated.
Oz said he favors congressional action to codify the task force’s work. “I think the vice president’s right: we need more aggressive penalties,” he said. “When you steal money from the federal government, you ought to go to jail and go to jail for a long time…”
On February 2, Rep. Young Kim (R-CA40) introduced HR 7312, “To establish a national task force to investigate and combat fraud involving Federal dollars.”
Co-sponsoring was Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN8). In April the bill gained three other co-sponsors but has seen no apparent forward movement.
Oz added that MacCallum that frequently “folks come from other countries” carry out the fraudulent siphoning of federal taxpayer dollars. “Chinese mafia members” are a major player, he said, to which MacCallum noted reported fraud in Flushing, NY not far from Fox News Channel’s studios.
On February 9, the New York State Office of the Inspector General for Medicaid Services and U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Public Affairs announced that a federal complaint was issued against two men from Queens, NY who allegedly “turned a pharmacy and social adult day care centers meant to help senior citizens into a $120 million dollar Medicare and Medicaid fraud scheme.”
The press release reads, in part:
According to the complaint, Inwoo Kim, also known as “Tony Kim” and “Long Jin,” 42, of Flushing, owned a pharmacy and two social adult day care centers — Z & W Empire Enterprise Inc. doing business as Royal Adult Daycare (Royal) and Happy Life Inc. (Happy Life). Daniel Lee, also known as “Daniel Yang” and “Donghee Yang,” 56, of Flushing, served as the program director at Happy Life. Between 2016 and 2026, Kim and Yang paid illegal bribes in the form of cash and supermarket gift certificates to Medicaid recipients and Medicare beneficiaries to induce them to fill prescriptions at Kim’s pharmacy.
The defendants also allegedly paid illegal cash kickbacks to Medicaid recipients to induce them to enroll with Kim’s social adult day cares. According to the complaint, Kim discussed the illegal payments by text message, writing to a co-conspirator, “Please give the $10,000 to the Korean members first.” Yang similarly texted about the payments, writing to a co-conspirator, “I gave the payment,” and “I left the envelope [for a patient] with Tony [Kim].” At times, Kim and Yang allegedly submitted claims for day care services that exceeded Royal and Happy Life’s permitted capacity. To generate the cash needed to pay kickbacks and bribes, Kim and Yang withdrew significant cash from bank accounts they controlled. In total, Medicare and Medicaid paid approximately $120 million for prescription drugs and social adult day care services that were medically unnecessary, not provided, or induced by kickbacks and bribes. Law enforcement executed numerous search warrants and seized several bank accounts in connection with the arrests.
Kim and Yang are both charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud. If convicted, they face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.
“The American people need to know that this is a fight not about money; it’s not even about health; they’re stealing our trust,” Oz told MacCallum. “We’ve moving from a high-trust society to being a low-trust society ’cause Americans don’t steal from the poor; this is not what we do. It’s a lot of folks who come from other countries who are doing this.”
He said the Biden administration minimized the importance of pursuing evidence of healthcare fraud. “My agency — we had six people left in the agency doing fraud in Medicaid. The prior administration told people, ‘We don’t want you going after this…I don’t want you telling us about fraud.'”
“When I came into the agency,” he continued, “we had a lot of people [who] actually wanted to deal with these problems who were told that they couldn’t before, and they are now aggressively doing their jobs. That’s why we have been so successful. We’ve already stopped $42 billion from leaving this building; we have a lot more to do…”