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 actua
