Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), said on Jan. 23 that a building in Minnesota, which used to be a linen factory, is housing 400 Medicaid-billing businesses.
In a
video posted on social media, Oz revealed the finding while standing alongside Deputy Health Secretary and acting CDC Director Jim O’Neill outside the Griggs-Midway Building in St. Paul, Minnesota.
“Behind me is the Griggs Midway building. It looks like a factory because it was a factory,” he said. “Roughly 400 Medicaid businesses were started in the building behind me over the last several years.”
These businesses, Oz said, collectively billed an estimated $380 million to Medicaid, sparking fraud concerns, especially given that the building is located in an industrial area.
“You can’t imagine getting extra business support. An autistic child probably wouldn’t want to come here. You hear the noise. It’s just not a hospitable place,” he said. “The question is, how is it possible 400 businesses, billing almost $400 million, were able to thrive here?”
Oz said he thinks it’s perplexing that state authorities did not monitor how an industrial complex, where people typically wouldn’t seek child care or transportation support, could end up housing hundreds of Medicaid-billing businesses.
“How is it possible this could come up like an abscess in the heart of Minneapolis and nobody was watching? I think it's because they weren't looking. They didn't want to know that there was a problem happening here,” he said.
“It’s very concerning to me that only now, when there’s more federal supervision, are people beginning to ask tough questions.”
Minnesota has been under the
spotlight for Medicaid and other fraud, including a $300 million pandemic fraud
case involving the nonprofit organization Feeding Our Future. Prosecutors said it was the country’s largest COVID-19-related fraud scam and that the defendants—mostly Somalis—exploited a state-run, federally funded program intended to provide food for children.
Oz told The Epoch Times in an
exclusive interview on Jan. 17 that there has been a “cover-up” for years, and the extent of fraud in Minnesota allegedly reaches the highest echelons of the state government.
On Jan. 20, the chair of the Energy and Commerce committee and two House subcommittee chairs
asked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Shireen Gandhi, the temporary commissioner of Minnesota’s Department of Human Services, to turn over documents and communications about alleged Medicaid fraud in the state.
“The extensive fraud schemes being perpetrated in Minnesota have wreaked havoc on government-funded health programs. We have an obligation to ensure finite taxpayer dollars are being used responsibly, and that the most vulnerable Americans are not being exploited to the benefit of fraudsters and foreign actors,” Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.) and Reps. John Joyce (R-Pa.) and Morgan Griffith (R-Va.) said in a joint
statement.
Walz has
acknowledged that the state has a fraud problem and said state officials have been making progress on the issue.
The Epoch Times reached out to Walz’s office for additional comment but did not receive a response by publication time.
Jack Phillips contributed to this report.
