President Donald Trump’s administration acknowledged that it used incorrect figures as part of a federal fraud probe into New York’s Medicaid program, according to the Associated Press and a statement from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services spokesman Chris Krepich. The acknowledgment followed what CMS officials said was a problem in how they identified New York’s billing-code approach for personal care services used by Medicaid enrollees.
The figure at the center of the dispute related to personal care services—help with basic activities such as bathing, grooming and meal preparation. In a social media video and in a letter to New York’s Democratic governor announcing the investigation, Dr. Mehmet Oz, who administers CMS, said New York’s Medicaid program last year provided personal care services to “some 5 million people,” which he said would amount to nearly three-fourths of the state’s 6.8 million Medicaid enrollees.
Krepich told the AP this week that the “real number” of New Yorkers who used those services last year was about 450,000—between 6% and 7% of total enrollees. He said CMS mischaracterized New York’s approach to applying billing codes and that it had since refined its methodology, while emphasizing in an emailed statement that the agency remains committed to analyses that reflect state-specific billing practices.
Krepich said the CMS investigation remains ongoing, and that the administration is reviewing New York’s response to Oz’s letter. CMS, he said, still has concerns about New York’s oversight of personal care services and Medicaid, including that the state spends more per beneficiary and per resident than the average state and has high personal care spending and a large personal care aide workforce.
Health analysts cited by the AP questioned whether other elements of the Trump administration’s anti-fraud push depend on similarly faulty findings. Michael Kinnucan, a senior health policy adviser at the Fiscal Policy Institute, said the numbers could have been resolved quickly, calling it “slapdash,” and raising concern that the administration’s approach can “politicize” an effort that he said should involve collaboration among program stakeholders.
New York Department of Health senior public information officer Cadence Acquaviva described Oz’s initial mischaracterizations as “a targeted attempt to obscure the facts.” In a separate statement, a spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said, “The initial claim by CMS was patently false, and we are glad they now admit it,” adding that Hochul has “zero tolerance for waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid and other state programs.
The AP report also said the New York probe is part of a broader crackdown. It described similar investigative actions involving at least four other states—California, Florida, Maine and Minnesota—and said the effort appears to be expanding as midterm voters express worries about affordability.
The administration previously announced an anti-fraud task force across federal benefit programs led by Vice President JD Vance after Trump signed an executive order last month. As part of the effort, Vance announced a temporary halt of $243 million in Medicaid funding to Minnesota over fraud concerns, which Minnesota later sued.
In his video about New York, Oz also made other claims that advocates and beneficiaries said were inaccurate. The AP reported that Oz said New York made its screening for personal care eligibility “more lenient” by allowing problems like being “easily distracted” to qualify for personal care assistants, but Rebecca Antar, director of the health law unit at the Legal Aid Society, said the opposite was true after a rule change that took effect last September.
Krepich said Oz’s reference in the video was to whether New York’s standard for personal care services was “sufficiently rigorous,” and he added that when standards are overly permissive, they risk diverting resources away from individuals with the highest levels of need and adding long-term pressure on the Medicaid program’s sustainability.
The AP also reported that Oz described personal care services as “something that our families would normally do for us, like carrying groceries.” Kathleen Downes, a Nassau County Medicaid user with quadriplegic cerebral palsy who needs personal care help with activities including showering, using the toilet and eating, said the portrayal offended her and said she hires both her mother and outside assistants so her aging mother does not carry those tasks alone. Downes said her mother’s unpaid labor for years limited her ability to pursue career opportunities, adding: “He’s assuming that everybody wants to and can just do it for free forever,” and “And that’s not feasible for a lot of people.”