The Trump administration widened its Medicaid fraud crackdown to Florida on Tuesday, with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asking state leaders to provide details about how they oversee the program and respond to alleged bad actors. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said in a social media post that Florida has been a “hotspot for health care fraud for years” and urged officials to “step up and work with us to stop it.”
The request came in a letter sent to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state leaders, a CMS initiative that Oz said was designed to prompt states to share information about their fraud identification and prevention efforts. Oz’s announcement was framed as part of a broader Trump administration effort, with similar requests he said have been sent previously to New York, Minnesota, Maine and California.
The letter also arrives after Trump signed an executive order on Friday creating an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs, according to the AP report. The task force is led by Vice President JD Vance, and the administration has been emphasizing fraud, waste and abuse enforcement as voters express concern about affordability ahead of November elections.
In the Florida letter, Oz pointed to past examples of high-dollar fraud schemes in Florida’s Medicare and Medicaid programs that resulted in criminal charges, and he said CMS needs more information about the state’s oversight because of the “widespread scale and nature of these schemes.” Oz gave the Florida officials 30 days to respond to a set of detailed questions.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier responded to Oz’s post on X by saying the state’s Medicaid system faces extensive fraud and abuse and that his office looks forward to working with Oz. In the AP report, Uthmeier also shared an example of a recent Medicaid fraud arrest in Florida.
Spokespeople for DeSantis and for the Florida Agency for Health Care Administration, which oversees the state Medicaid program, did not immediately respond to emailed inquiries, according to the AP account. Oz’s letter recipients were not publicly identified in CMS’s message beyond the governor and other state leaders, but the administration set a defined deadline for answers.
The Florida action also echoes other federal steps described by CMS in Minnesota earlier this year, including halting Medicaid payments there over fraud concerns. MSI previously reported that the Trump administration paused some Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns in February, and the AP report says CMS later linked resumed funding to implementation of a “comprehensive corrective action plan.”
Beyond Medicaid, CMS also has taken steps related to Medicare billing scrutiny, including blocking new Medicare enrollments for suppliers of durable medical equipment, prosthetics, orthotics and other supplies used to treat chronic conditions or assist in injury recovery for six months, as described in the AP report.
The administration’s Florida request is the first letter that Oz has announced to a Republican-led state, the AP report said, as CMS seeks to communicate that fraud enforcement will apply regardless of political leadership.