California’s governor has been an outspoken critic of the Trump administration, and he has found his latest target: Gavin Newsom (D) has filed a civil rights complaint against Dr. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, over the latter’s allegations of health care fraud in the Golden State. While Newsom has claimed the allegations are racially motivated, Oz is pushing back.
Video origins
The feud began after Oz posted a video on X claiming to document health care fraud being perpetrated by Armenian immigrants throughout Los Angeles County. The county has become an “epicenter for health care fraud in America,” Oz said in the video, alleging $3.5 billion of fraud in Los Angeles and that the schemes are “run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia.”
Oz’s allegations are largely against hospice centers and home health care businesses. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which Oz runs, “certifies hospice providers to accept patients on government-subsidized health insurance,” said The Associated Press.
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The fraud “isn’t isolated to California, though as far as our team can tell, it’s the worst,” said Oz. But while he claims to be focusing on medical fraud, the video showed him standing not in front of a health care center but an Armenian-owned bakery.
In response to the video, Newsom filed a civil rights complaint against Oz. The video includes “racially charged and false public statements,” and Oz’s words “reveal a discriminatory motive that could infect how allegations of alleged fraud are conducted,” Newsom said in the filing.
The filing represents the peak of a “dayslong public quarrel” between Newsom and Oz, said The Guardian. The Armenian National Committee of America also filed a similar civil rights complaint.
‘No Armenian mafia going on here’
Newsom is not the only one disputing Oz’s allegations. California, and specifically the greater Los Angeles area, has the largest Armenian American population in the U.S., according to the World Population Review, and many are speaking out. The video has “generated intense local backlash” among this Armenian diaspora, said The New York Times. Fraud allegations in Los Angeles have also been investigated before, and “hospice fraud investigations and prosecutions have been ongoing for at least five years in California.”
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“I am really disappointed,” said Movses Bislamyan, the owner of the bakery seen in Oz’s video, to KABC-TV Los Angeles. Oz was “recording my signs and location and talking about some kind of fraud going on here. We have nothing to do with it. It has nothing to do whatsoever with the grocery store.” There’s “no Armenian mafia going on here. We are just hard-working businessmen. I don't understand why he’s mentioning" just Armenians, "especially Russian Armenians.” Newsom’s civil rights complaint claimed the bakery experienced a 30% drop in business after the video’s release.
But Oz maintains that he’s identifying fraud and says he will continue to do so. “If there were a real defense for California’s fraud crisis, we would hear it," Oz said on X in response to Newsom’s civil rights complaint. "CMS and law enforcement will keep doing the actual work: going after fraudsters, period."
Justin Klawans has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022. He began his career covering local news before joining Newsweek as a breaking news reporter, where he wrote about politics, national and global affairs, business, crime, sports, film, television and other news. Justin has also freelanced for outlets including Collider and United Press International.
