Trump administration admits a glaring error in its New York health fraud
accusations
[April 11, 2026]
By ALI SWENSON
NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration this week
acknowledged it made a significant error in figures it used to help
justify a fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, a glaring
mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in
Democratic-led states.
The error, which the administration admitted first to The Associated
Press, prompted health analysts to question how many of the Republican
administration’s sweeping anti-fraud efforts around the country were
based on faulty findings. One of a few mischaracterizations it made
about New York's Medicaid program, it also reflected a common criticism
that’s been made of Trump’s second administration — that it tends to
attack first and confirm the facts later.
“These numbers could have been cleared up in a phone call, so it’s
really slapdash,” said Fiscal Policy Institute senior health policy
adviser Michael Kinnucan, whose recent analysis called attention to the
Trump administration’s inaccurate claim.
The mistake appeared in comments made last month by Dr. Mehmet Oz, the
administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, in a
social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor
announcing the fraud investigation.
Oz claimed that New York’s 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’s 6.8 million Medicaid
enrollees.
“That level of utilization is unheard of,” Oz said in the video, adding
in his post that New York needs to “come clean about its Medicaid
program.”
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 AP this week. He said the agency misidentified
New York’s approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its
methodology.
“CMS 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,” he said in an
emailed statement.
Krepich said the probe was ongoing as the administration still has
concerns with New York’s oversight of personal care services and the
Medicaid program and is reviewing the state’s response to last month’s
letter. CMS had raised other flags about New York’s 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.
Health analysts said the state's 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’s initial mischaracterizations “a
targeted attempt to obscure the facts.”
“New York State remains committed to protecting and preserving vital
Medicaid programs that deliver high-quality services to New Yorkers who
depend on them,” she said.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “The initial
claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it."
“Governor 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,”
spokesperson Nicolette Simmonds said.
New York probe is part of a larger crackdown
The Trump administration’s investigation into New York comes as it has
similarly approached at least four other states, including California,
Florida, 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’re concerned about
affordability.
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Administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr.
Mehmet Oz speaks during a news conference on efforts to combat
fraud, in the Old Eisenhower Executive Office Building on the White
House campus Feb. 25, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Tom Brenner,
File)
 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 to Minnesota over fraud concerns, a move
over which the state has since sued.
Kinnucan, the analyst with expertise in New York’s Medicaid program,
said he’s concerned that the Trump administration’s adversarial
approach to targeting fraud in some states “politicizes” a
conversation that should be a team effort.
“We want to think collaboratively among all the stakeholders in the
program about how we can actually fix it,” Kinnucan said. “We don’t
want to have fraud be this political football.”
Oz made other claims New York advocates say are inaccurate
In his video, Oz made at least two other claims about New York that
Medicaid advocates and beneficiaries say distorted the facts.
In one instance, he said the state recently made its screening for
personal care eligibility “more lenient by allowing problems like
being ‘easily distracted’ to qualify for a personal care assistant.”
Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid
Society, said the opposite was true — that the state in a rule
change that went into effect last September instead made its program
requirements more stringent. She said being “easily distracted”
doesn’t appear anywhere among them.
Krepich said the administrator was referring to whether New York’s
standard for personal care services was “sufficiently rigorous.”
“When 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,”
he said.
Oz in the video also referred to personal care services as
“something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying
groceries.”
Kathleen Downes, a 33-year-old who has quadriplegic cerebral palsy
and uses personal care services in New York’s Nassau County, said
she was offended by the notion that all Medicaid beneficiaries have
family members who are willing and able to help.
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’t 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.
“He’s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free
forever,” Downes said. "And that’s not feasible for a lot of
people.”
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Associated Press writer Anthony Izaguirre contributed to this story.
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