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Dr. Mehmet Oz told Greg Kelly on Newsmax this week that what’s unfolding in Minnesota is not a minor bookkeeping error but a full-blown assault on the safety net designed to protect our most vulnerable citizens. He warned that Medicare and Medicaid are being gamed by sophisticated criminal networks, and that the situation in Minnesota is a shocking example of a problem spreading nationwide.
Oz stressed that career officials inside the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services were stunned by the scale and sophistication of the schemes uncovered, noting grotesque imbalances like an explosion of durable medical equipment suppliers in certain markets. That kind of distortion should set off alarm bells for any American who believes government programs must serve people, not fraudsters.
He went further, flagging possible foreign involvement and organized-crime links, pointing fingers at groups stretching from Cuba to Armenia and even citing past cases involving Russian multinational criminal efforts. These are not the actions of small-time grifters but coordinated networks that treat taxpayer programs like ripe pickings, and Washington needs to treat them as foreign-enabled criminal enterprises.
This isn’t theoretical: investigative reporting and audits show the fraud problem in Minnesota has already cost taxpayers dearly, with estimates and prosecutions piling up in schemes like Feeding Our Future and other state program scandals. Minnesotans are rightly outraged, and independent analysis says the losses are large enough to matter to the state’s bottom line.
Local leaders in Minnesota have started to respond, pushing audits and asking the Office of the Legislative Auditor to scrutinize programs that funnel billions in taxpayer dollars. Lawmakers from both sides should be demanding accountability right now instead of reflexively defending an administration that has been slow to fix systemic vulnerabilities.
Conservatives should welcome the Trump administration’s move to bring officials together and hold a press conference — this is precisely the kind of federal leadership that’s needed when state systems are being looted and vulnerable Americans are harmed. We must applaud efforts to trace the money, prosecute the criminals, and stop foreign actors from turning American compassion into a cash cow.
The solutions are straightforward and popular: establish strong independent oversight, increase penalties for fraud, freeze suspect spending until audits are complete, and beef up fraud-detection tools so the crooks can’t operate in the open. Minnesotans and taxpayers nationwide should demand those reforms and hold governors and attorneys general to account at the ballot box if they fail to act.
Americans who work hard and play by the rules deserve a government that protects, not one that enables theft through incompetence or political favoritism. It’s time for conservatives—and all lovers of honest government—to push for a relentless, unapologetic fight against this fraud so our most vulnerable can finally get the care they were promised.
