The Trump administration is looking into hospice fraud in Texas, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz said.
Oz previewed the plan to look into the rapid increase in the Lone Star State hospice centers, which provide care for dying patients, at an event on Tuesday hosted by the free-market Paragon Health Institute on Medicare and Medicaid fraud.
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Identifying fraudulent hospice centers has been part of the Trump administration’s emphasis on targeting waste, fraud, and abuse in social safety net programs.
Medicaid, the state-administered, partially federally funded health insurance program, covers roughly 70 million low-income adults and children. But it also covers other types of care, such as hospice, that are not covered by private insurance or Medicare, which is federal insurance for seniors and those with certain disabilities.
Oz and his team earlier in April identified large-scale hospice fraud in Los Angeles County, which was found to have one-third of all hospice centers in the United States.
The newly created anti-fraud task force, headed by Vice President JD Vance, earlier this month shut down nearly 450 hospices and 23 home health agencies operating out of Los Angeles, pausing payment to providers that have been believed to be defrauding the CMS out of more than $600 million.
During his address on Tuesday, Oz said his team would be looking into the dramatic increase in hospice care centers in Texas since 2020.
“We’re going to go to Texas and look at the hospice there, because we see the increase,” Oz said. “And I bet you those same scumbags that are in California that defrauded the American people, they know how to drive to Texas.”
A recent Texas state legislature oversight hearing found 1,366 hospice licenses in Texas as of March 2026 — a near doubling since 2020. Texas has the third-largest elderly population in the country and more than 4.7 million Medicare beneficiaries in 2024.
Oz said his goal is to go after the “people who are making big dollars” through defrauding the Medicare and Medicaid payment systems, which cost trillions of dollars each year.
“When you have that kind of money passing through our system, you can’t do one-off little things,” Oz said. “We have to actually figure out what are the red flags that help us identify where the big people are and take them out enough in a way that actually moves the needle.”
But Oz said it is difficult for his agency to audit what he called “soft services,” such as hospice care, autism or special needs centers, and home or personal aides.
“It’s a problem because CMS was built and designed to audit per the operation,” Oz said. “Did the operation take place? Was it done by a licensed doctor? Did the hospital have a review process that was appropriate?”
Last week, Oz announced that his agency would launch a nationwide audit on Medicaid systems for all 50 states, in which states will have 30 days to submit plans to the CMS on how they intend to review their providers.
DR. OZ ANNOUNCES MEDICAID FRAUD AUDIT FOR ALL 50 STATES
He clarified during the event on Tuesday that the goal is to help states identify these soft service programs through a variety of measures, such as ensuring that all hospice or home health providers have proper identification and do not have criminal records involving fraud.
Oz also said the goal of the initiative is to spur states to do the auditing work that they would like to do anyway, but that sometimes it is “easier for [CMS] to be the bad guy” when state governments are under pressure from health industry lobbyists.
