Administration admits error in fraud claim

President ‘Trump's administration last week acknowledged it made asignificant error in figures it used to help justify a fraud probe into New York's Medicaid program, a mistake that undercuts a federal campaign to tackle waste, mostly in Democratic-led states.

- ALI SWENSON

DR. MEHMET OZ, administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, at a recent meeting.

SHELBY TAUBER Bloomberg

'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 the administration made about New York's Medicaid program, the error 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, or CMS, 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 such as 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 last week. He said the agency misidentified New York's approach to applying billing codes and had since refined its methodology.