JD Vance (00:08):
Well, good afternoon, everybody. Let me say a couple things about what we're announcing today, and then I'm going to kick over to Dr. Oz, and then we are going to take a few questions.
(00:18)
As a lot of, there are way too many Americans who are being defrauded by very bad actors in our society, people who take the goodwill and the trust of the American taxpayer and they decide to use it against us. They decide to make themselves rich instead of allowing these programs that are set up to make it easier for people to take care of their families, to make it easier for autistic kids to get the after school services they need, to make it easier for people to get the healthcare that they need. And we are going to start very aggressively in the administration, cracking down on the people and the organizations that are defrauding Americans.
(00:52)
So we're announcing today that we have decided to temporarily halt certain amounts of Medicaid funding that are going to the state of Minnesota in order to ensure that the state of Minnesota takes its obligations seriously to be good stewards of the American people's tax money. Now, what is this going to mean? What this means is that, first of all, that providers on the ground in Minnesota have actually already been paid. The state has paid those providers the money. What we're doing is we are stopping the federal payments that will go to the state government until the state government takes its obligations seriously to stop the fraud that's being perpetrated against the American taxpayer. There are a few different ways that we're doing that. There are a few different affirmative actions that we're taking today. Dr. Oz is going to talk about those, but let me talk a little bit about the spirit of this and why we're doing it.
(01:49)
Number one, one of the examples of fraud that we've seen in Minnesota that we've verified that is just awful is that a program that existed to ensure that autistic children had access to some after school services has made a number of people rich, not by providing services to needy children, but by allowing fraudsters to take money that ought by right go to American citizens and to American families and to set up sham businesses, set up sham clients, set up people who are not even autistic but claim to be autistic in order that they benefit from the money that's out there.
(02:26)
Now, what does that mean? Number one, it means that a lot of people are getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers, but more fundamentally and more importantly than that, it means that there are kids in Minnesota who deserve these services, who need these services, and they're not going to those kids. They're going to fraudsters in Minneapolis. That is unacceptable, and that's the sort of thing that we're cutting off with this action today.
(02:51)
Let me make one final point about the spirit of this. One of the things I love about our country is that we're a generous country. We're a generous people. We take care of our fellow citizens who can't afford medical care because they're down on their luck. We take care of people who can't afford to put food on the table even though they work hard and play by the rules. We recognize that we're all in this together. And part of the reason why we have Medicaid or part of the reason why we have food stamps, part of the reason why we have these programs is we want to make sure that kids who grew up in families, not all that different from the family that I grew up in, that they have access to the basic necessities, food, medical care, after school services when their family needs them, but they're unable to pay.
(03:34)
What's happening in Minneapolis, in California, in a number of states all across our country is that the generosity and the good hearts of our fellow Americans are being taken advantage of. We are taking that social contract that says that our American citizens, we take care of one another and we're allowing a few bad actors to get rich off that generosity of spirit instead of providing the services to the kids who need it. This is disgraceful. It has happened for too long. Far too many people have gotten rich by taking what is the best of the American spirit and getting rich off of it instead of providing services to kids who need it. That is stopping today. We're taking a whole-of-government approach in the Trump administration to take this fraud seriously. What Mehmet Oz and his team at CMS have done is really remarkable and it's just the first step of our efforts.
(04:29)
So without further ado, let me turn it over to Mehmet to say a few words about what he's doing, what his team has uncovered and what they're accomplishing with this new action. Dr. Oz.
Mehmet Oz (04:39):
Mr. Vice President, I appreciate the leadership on this. There's no question that his commitment, the Vice President's commitment to rooting out this fraud is going to make a massive difference in preserving and protecting our nation's public health programs. It's going to protect patients. I want to thank President Trump for pushing all of us to make sure we protect our most vulnerable Americans, the ones that JD mentioned, the ones he grew up with, the ones all of us know in our lives. It also protects taxpayers from attacks on our healthcare system. Secretary Kennedy has spearheaded these efforts, and thanks to his leadership, I'm proud to announce the largest, the largest fraud initiative, anti-fraud effort of its kind in CMS history.
(05:16)
Now, why is this action necessary? Last night, in the State of the Union addressed, the president spoke about the affordability issues that we have improved dramatically in this administration, but let's put some numbers on healthcare. The average family puts about $27,000 in the healthcare a year. They only pay $7,000 themselves, which is a lot, but there's an extra $20,000 invested for them. This is not a reasonable amount of money to spend. We have got to bend that curve downwards. It's unpredictable as well when you have to make these expenses and the fraud that we're experiencing in America is making this already dangerous problem much worse. So we're going to fix these issues.
(05:51)
The president last night spoke about the need for price transparency. That's going to help by making people more aware of what they're paying. It's also going to help us at CMS figure out what you should be paying and identifying fraud. To that note, the president announced last night that he's appointing our vice president to lead the war on healthcare fraud, a wise choice. Your passion for this will make a huge difference. This is not about the money by itself. This is about people's lives and our culture, our shared values that have allowed these beautiful programs, Medicare, Medicaid, to survive brilliantly for 60 years.
(06:22)
We believe, listen carefully, we are spending $300 billion a year in healthcare in this country for fraudulent, abusive, or wasteful purposes, $300 billion. Let's put that in perspective. If we could reduce fraud by 5%, which is at $300 billion, we would take the trust fund that's going to take care of all of us as we get older and we would allow it not to expire in five to six years. We would double its life expectancy. That's massively important if you're going to trust the social safety net to be there for you. You deserve that social safety net. It's there. It's created. We're not going to let fraudsters steal it from you.
(06:58)
The Stellar CNS team, I'm want to call him out, Kim Brandt, who's videoing me over there, Dan Brillman, CAPRI, SNAP staff, Carlton had worked tirelessly to put this together. They've been rooting out criminals all year long. I know as well what it's like. I visited all these areas, personally witnessed what it's like to see something you know is wrong and wonder why no one tried to fix it. It's infuriating. The vice president described it very accurately, exactly what you see on the ground. These self-serving scoundrels, that's what they are, who rob our federal and state health programs have decided it is worth the risk.
(07:28)
I'm going to make a proposition to you. If you commit crime on Medicare or Medicaid in America and you steal, let's say a couple million dollars, your jail sentence, first time offender, maybe a year. For a lot of folks, that's a good deal. We have to take these crimes seriously and treat them as seriously as if they were bank robberies because they're more dangerous than bank robberies. People get hurt during them.
(07:47)
Let me share some of these horrible stories. The vice president started highlighting autism. Let's get into details of what's really going on in Minnesota. These are real cases from our group at CMS. These are adjudicated numbers. There is a fraud scheme in Minnesota where criminals, soon to be criminals, pay moms $1,000, roughly, in order to enroll their children as being autistic, falsely, dishonestly claiming their children are autistic. They then bill Medicaid, this has already happened, millions of dollars for services that were never rendered, never delivered by a qualified staff member. These schemes disproportionately involved immigrant communities. They're insulated. They're able to organize efforts and sometimes they don't understand what's going on, and it ultimately diverts resources away from kids who truly have autism because if every kid in the neighborhood has autism, then nobody has autism in terms of how you can manage them.
(08:37)
There was one behavioral... And by the way, these kids, they carry that diagnosis of autism the rest of their lives. Their mom made a bad decision, the kid pays the price for the rest of their life. There's one behavioral health organization, Mr. Vice President, in Minnesota. They received 11 and a half million dollars in Medicaid payments, but the top biller, the top biller submitted 450 days where they claimed they were working more than 24 hours a day. I mean, even in the White House, that's tough. It's hard to work more than 24 hours a day. How it didn't get picked up is shocking to us at CMS.
(09:06)
There are other red flags in Minnesota, including hundreds of beneficiaries receiving treatment linked to one location, which was impossible physically to be true. We had eight beneficiaries in one of these substance use disorder centers, eight who were already dead, but the center was still billing us. Not only did they let the person pass, they kept billing for it. That's the level of average we're talking about.
(09:26)
So CMS is done paying and chasing. We don't think jail sentences are the right way out. These criminals flee the country. Many are foreign nationals. Instead, we're launching the largest action against fraud that we've ever taken. The money's not going to ever leave the building again. We're going to start dreaming the swamp of the crooks that have inhabited it and are defrauding us. There are three bold actions. The first, and for many of you may be the most important, is we're going for the first time, take a massive action to defer funds to a state.
(09:54)
Let's start with this Medicaid program in Minnesota, which serves pregnant women. Medicaid takes care of our children. 53% of kids
Mehmet Oz (10:00):
... are born into poverty, they're supported through Medicaid, disadvantaged seniors, individual disabilities, it's unponderable that you would take advantage of these precious programs, yet they're putting it at risk, all of it, by stealing the money. So it's our duty to preserve Medicaid. And what we're going to do is identify the scammers, which we have done in Minnesota. We've identified that they've hijacked, in particular, a certain part of the Minnesota Medicaid system said differently, and I'll just put the numbers out there, it's going to be $259 million of deferred payments from Medicaid to Minnesota, which we're announcing, as I speak, to Governor Walz and his team. And that's based on an audit of the last three months of 2025. Restated, a quarter billion dollars is not going to be paid this month to Minnesota for its Medicaid claims.
(10:49)
Now that's a million, rather a quarter billion dollars of money. That's your money. It's your taxpayer money. And these home and community-based services, which again are services that are typically things you would do for your family, but for whatever reason, your family is not there to provide them, are very hard to audit. And for that reason, there's been a lot of slippage. The guardrails have not been well maintained. And if you're not serious about the integrity of the program, you'll see these problems happening in your state, which is why Minnesota's not alone, although they're the first to receive this action. These high growth areas of fraud are difficult to police. And so we require the states to take these issues seriously. This quarter billion dollar deferment is hopefully going to get on the radar screen for the State of Minnesota and make sure they are responsive to our requests.
(11:32)
We did what any honest and patient-focused agency would do. We have notified the state and said that we will give them the money, but we're going to hold it and only release it after they propose and act on a comprehensive corrective action plan to solve the problem. If Minnesota fails to clean up the systems, the state will rack up a billion dollars of deferred payments this year. Governor Walz has 60 days, 60 days, sir, to respond to our letter. And if providers and beneficiaries are worried about getting their money and services, please call your governor. These are services the governor has already paid for, we are just not reimbursing the state. And to make it clear, there is a rainy day fund in Minnesota, so we are very confident that people will not be hurt in Minnesota. This is not a problem with the people of Minnesota, it's a problem with the leadership of Minnesota and other states who do not take Medicaid preservation seriously.
(12:19)
Any delay in services should be laid at the seat of Governor Walz. I believe he will take this seriously. They're not the only state that's floundering. And have more announcements with other states coming soon.
(12:32)
Second big issue has to do with Medicare. So that was Medicaid in Minnesota takes care of our most vulnerable populations. Medicare takes care of our seniors. Durable medical equipment. Most of you have not thought much about this category. These are the folks who they serve wheelchairs, canes, they sell knee braces, catheters, Foley catheters. Durable medical equipment suppliers because they ship prostheses and these items, they're a great target for fraudsters. Here's what they do. They can steal the beneficiary number and they never ship the product. They pretend to ship the product, but nothing ever gets sent out. So there's no cost of goods sold, there's no inventory, there's no payroll, no one works in the place, it's empty. But they generate millions of dollars of fake bills.
(13:13)
There was a national DMA fraud scheme that generated $1.1 billion recently in fraudulent orthotic brace orders. The beneficiaries who actually whose numbers were stolen and used, they couldn't get those products. Imagine if you're on an insulin pump and someone steals your number and orders an insulin pump fictitiously, bills Medicare, and then you come and try to get this to deal with your diabetes, you don't get it. That actually happened. And what happens to those patients? They don't know if their blood sugar's so high or so low that they might die. That's the risks that we're allowing by not taking this seriously. So today, issue number two is we're announcing a six-month national moratorium, a national moratorium blocking all new enrollments for durable medical equipment, prosthesis, orthotics, supplies across the board. These crimes are becoming a major source of fraudulent activity and I'll just mention, Mr. Vice President, in South Florida, you ever go to McDonald's?
JD Vance (14:07):
Yeah, too much.
Mehmet Oz (14:09):
We had rehearsed this. So there are two times, twice as many, durable medical equipment suppliers in South Florida than McDonald's.
JD Vance (14:17):
Wow.
Mehmet Oz (14:18):
And that's not because Secretary Kennedy is closing down McDonald's. That's because the amount of fraud is so massive that it's easier to open one of these suppliers than open a bank account, which is why we're working with Secretary Bessent. And part of the reason for this moratorium is it gives us time to be able to deal with these issues that have become massive. And if we just shut down South Florida, they'd all flee up California and to Texas. So we have to shut the whole country down. This unfortunate necessity is going to allow us to get on top of what we believe is billions of dollars of DME frauds.
(14:48)
We've already stopped a billion and a half dollars of billing, but we need more time to shut down these bad guys. But it's going to be effective and it's not going to touch the people who need these services. We have designed the system so that all the people who are already selling products can continue to sell product until we check them out. But no new DME enrollments, no ownership changes, all the things that fraudsters have done historically will be blocked. This way we're preserving access, we're not allowing tax dollars to be stolen.
(15:15)
Now you may be asking why is it so important to crush fraud to assure the affordability of our nation? I'll just give you one example that we just finished dealing with, Mr. Vice President's aware of this. We had skin substitutes that were generating, we believe this coming year, $ 23 billion in billing. Because we're able to shut that down to where it's supposed to be because they have a role when used appropriately, every single senior in America, every one is going to get $132 extra money this year just from that one thing that we shut down. That's the amount of money we're talking about and it affects all of us. And to that note, because every one of you are affected, we want all of you to help us.
(15:53)
So the third big announcement is we want to crush fraud by crowdsourcing ideas. We're issuing a request for information. We need and we want your help. The vice president, myself, the president, Secretary Kennedy, all of us know that all of us are smarter than any one of us. So what can you do? We want your input on how to prevent, detect and respond to fraud for in-government funded healthcare, whatever ideas you have, we're interested in. Our goal is to supercharge program integrity over the next six months. So we put in a request, that means providers and suppliers and payers and technology companies, patient advocates, beneficiaries, if you see fraud, you let us know.
(16:27)
A state Medicaid director can show us patterns of fraud that we're not aware of. A provider can help understand compliance burdens and how to deal with those more effectively. Patient advocate, get cracking on making sure that people are aware of fraud. And like we have done already this year, by pulling in those kinds of ideas, we've stopped almost $6 billion from leaving the building. But that leaves a lot more out there that we can take advantage of. So over the next 60 days, the CRUSH initiative we just issued is us asking you to help us build something better, to help the brave patriots out there who want to play a role to play a role. Call 1-800-HHS- TIPS if you see fraud or just go to CMS.gov/fraud. Those are simple, easy ways for you to help us address the problems the vice president highlighted. God bless you all. Mr. Vice President.
JD Vance (17:10):
Thank you. Great job. Very, very, very important initiative and we'll take a few questions. I didn't expect you to put me on the spot with Bobby Kennedy about my fast-food habits, but here we are. Sir, in the front.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Two things Mr. Vice President. First, can you talk about the legal authority under which the federal government pauses legally obligated funds under mandatory funding for Congress such as Medicaid? And secondly, if you could tell us anything you know about the situation off the coast of Cuba with the speedboat shop? You've been briefed on that, do you know if Americans were killed or injured?
JD Vance (17:44):
Yeah, so on the second thing, actually Marco briefed me about 15 minutes ago on it, but we don't know a whole lot of details. And so I'll defer to the White House to provide more updates as we get them. Certainly a situation that we're monitoring, hopefully it's not as bad as we fear it could be. But can't say more because I just don't know more.
(18:02)
On the question of the legal authorities. I mean inherent in Congress' assigning of the administration, actually we're the ones who spend this money. Congress appropriates it. We're the ones who actually make sure this goes to the people it ought to go to. And inherent in that is making sure that it only goes to the people that Congress says that it should go to. We shouldn't be sending money to fraudsters. We should not be sending money to companies that are committing mass fraud. We shouldn't be sending money to anybody that's trying to defraud the American taxpayer.
(18:33)
So I know Oz and his team, he's got the best team, I think, in healthcare, anywhere in the private or the public sectors. It's one of the great things I love about working with Dr. Oz is he's brought great people along with them and congratulations on this. But I feel quite confident we have the legal authority to do this. And, again, I'd reiterate, we don't want to do this. We don't want to be in a situation where the State of Minnesota is being so careless with federal tax dollars that we have to turn the screws on them a little bit so that they take this fraud seriously.
(19:04)
Your heard Dr. Oz say this. Tim Walz could call him, could call me, call anybody in the administration and we've give him 60 days to respond to this. All we need the governor and the administration in Minnesota to do is something quite simple, which is to show that before you give Medicaid funds to somebody, you're taking seriously whether they provided the services that they say that they're providing. And the fact that there are so many people handing out millions and billions of dollars of federal Medicaid money without even confirming that they're doing the thing that they say that they're doing, it's a disgrace. It's a defrauding of the American taxpayer and we're stopping it. Caitlin.
Caitlin (19:44):
Thank you, Mr. Vice President. Two questions. One, on the 60 days that Governor Walz has to respond, what exactly is the condition that he needs to meet for this funding to be released back to his state? I just wasn't really clear on that. And secondly, on Iran, while you're here, can you explain to the American people why the United States would need
Caitlin (20:00):
... to strike Iran to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon if the United States obliterated their enrichment program last summer?
JD Vance (20:06):
Well, I'm not going to make any news on Iran today, Caitlin. I'll let the president make those announcements. As you know, he is sending two of his best negotiators to Geneva tomorrow in order to continue to try to strike the best deal possible for the American people. But the principle is very simple, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. If they try to rebuild a nuclear weapon, that causes problems for us. And in fact, we've seen evidence that they have tried to do exactly that. So the president is sending those negotiators to try to address that problem. As the president has said repeatedly, he wants to address that problem diplomatically. But of course, the president has other options as well.
(20:40)
On what we need to see from Governor Walz, I'll say something about that briefly and then turn it over to Dr. Oz. Look, it's actually pretty simple. What we want to see from the governor of Minnesota, from the entire administration there in Minnesota is some affirmative steps to make sure that the people who are billing us for Medicaid services are actually providing those Medicaid services. The main source of fraud, whether it's a small business or a bigger company, is you have people who are billing the government millions, tens of millions, billions of dollars, saying that they're providing a service, but there's no actual confirmation. There's no follow up to ensure that they're actually providing those services. We want to see that follow up from Minnesota. Dr. Oz, maybe you can speak to a little bit more about how exactly we want to see that.
Mehmet Oz (21:26):
Let me combine both these questions. So on December the 7th, we sent a letter to Governor Walz asking for a corrective action plan, which is a mechanism for us to extract from the state what they think they can do to fix the problems. The answer we got back at the end of the month, which is what the deadline was, was inadequate. We alerted them to this. We issued guidance that we were going to defer income based on an audit of last quarter's money.
(21:46)
So we actually looked dutifully through all of the bills that were sent to us. We found that of these high-risk services, roughly half of them, you really couldn't trust the data we were looking at. It's not that the numbers don't add up, the backup to the numbers is not there. So what do we need to have happen? We need to know that the providers actually are the real providers. Oftentimes, there's no person that you can associate with the treatment itself. We need you after you adjudicate who these providers are, make sure they're not already in trouble for doing bad stuff and then re-evaluate all the current providers to make sure they're supposed to be able to provide these services.
(22:21)
And there's a whole slew of tools that we can use, including checking before you pay the bill, that the bill is legitimate. That prepayment review is incredibly important. It's cumbersome. It's clunky. We wish we didn't have to do it, but I'm going to highlight something that the vice president mentioned. These are services that we normally would not pay for. They're services we give to you because your family can't do them for you. If it's a hernia operation, there's a dozen people who have credentials, licensing.
(22:47)
We can [inaudible 00:22:49]. But if your service is transporting you to the doctor's office and you can't tell me who actually drove the car and why they billed so much, and did the patient even go to the doctor's office, then we have to do our job, which you would want us to do, which is to ask for some backup. And there wasn't any backup. So to echo 60 days, that's the deadline we expect to hear back. We've been following the rules meticulously to do this correctly, which is one of the reasons we're optimistic we'll be effective in Minnesota.
JD Vance (23:16):
Great.
Speaker 2 (23:18):
[inaudible 00:23:19] vice president. I'm just wondering about this huge universe of fraud that you're talking about, $300 billion. How did you arrive at that number? What number is realizable in terms of savings? You've mentioned California. You've said that you're going to move on to other states. Can you just give us a snapshot of where you see that and are all of the states that you're going after and where you see these problems ruled by Democratic... I mean California, Minnesota is a democratic run state. So a little bit of a preview.
JD Vance (23:52):
Well, you said ruled by Democrats. We didn't use that word. You did. But here's what I'd say, $300 billion in the grand scheme of how much the federal government spends on healthcare services, it sounds like a ton of money. The federal government spends well over a trillion dollars in providing medical services to the American people. And based on what we've seen, based on the amount of services that we've seen that have been billed, that are fraudulent, and also based on the fact that in a number of blue states, and this is true as far as I know, only in blue states where you have illegal aliens encouraged to get on the Medicaid program.
(24:26)
We actually think $300 billion may be conservative. Our ambition here is to get as much of that money back for the American taxpayer as possible. Again, we're taking the social safety net. We're taking something that exists for the benefit of people who can't pay for medicine on their own. We want to help our fellow Americans. We can't do that if those programs are being defrauded by people who either shouldn't be here in the first place or have the legal right to be here, but are committing criminal acts by defrauding these systems.
Mehmet Oz (24:55):
Can I clarify one number?
JD Vance (24:56):
Go ahead, please.
Mehmet Oz (24:57):
Just on the numbers, the 300 billion is from the Kaiser Family Foundation assessment of estimated 5% fraud in all healthcare. Not just federally funded healthcare. So it's 5% of the total, roughly $6 trillion. We spend close to $2 trillion, 1.8 trillion of federal monies. So the federal portion would be about $100 billion. And we believe much of that would be achievable. It's not fraud, it's fraud, waste, and abuse altogether. Sorry.
JD Vance (25:20):
Yep. No man.
Speaker 3 (25:21):
Thank you. [inaudible 00:25:22] Me?
JD Vance (25:23):
Yeah, you can go first and then you.
Speaker 3 (25:24):
Okay. Thank you very much, vice president. As you know, the Kurds have been loyal allies to the United States for decades. You're fighting dictatorship in Iraq. You're fighting terrorism on the region. And recently President Masoud Barzani worked closely with the US [inaudible 00:25:44] envoy to Syria to help find a peaceful solution to the conflict there. How do you see the future of the strategic relationship between the Kurdistan and the United States of America?
JD Vance (25:57):
Well, look, let me be brief here because we're here to focus on the fact that way too many people are defrauding the American population, but we have a great relationship with the Kurds. The president loves the Kurds. I know that the entire administration, we've had great contacts and great friendships with the people, the Kurdish people in various countries all over the world. And look, our attitude is we want those people to be able to live in peace and harmony and prosperity with their neighbors. We've pursued a foreign policy of peace in part because we want the Kurdish people, but also the Arab people who live there, the Jewish people who live there, the Christians.
(26:31)
We want everybody to be able to live in peace. And that has been the main focus of our policy in Syria. It's been the main focus of our policy, really all over the world. Ma'am? Yeah. No, no, let's... Thank you.
Speaker 4 (26:42):
How do you intend to make sure that the consequences of ending these fraud programs in Minnesota don't impact the people who are enrolled in Medicaid? And at a bigger picture, how do you think that the polls... The polls show that Democrats historically have the advantage on healthcare? Do you think that these efforts on fraud might change that for Republicans?
JD Vance (27:00):
I'm not really worried about the politics. I'm worried about the justice of it all. I think it's offensive that American taxpayers pay into these programs and they are defrauded. And I think in some ways more significantly than that, it's really sad that American children who need these services aren't able to get them because it's going to fraudsters instead of somebody else. So here's what I think. I mean, look, we're certainly going to make sure that our anti-fraud efforts go after the fraudsters and not after anybody who actually benefits from these services.
(27:32)
But I actually think the question is a little off in a way, because the problem is not going after the fraud. The problem is the fact that these programs are being defrauded to begin with. They will not exist. Our social safety net will disappear unless we take fraud more seriously. So what I'm most worried about is that unless we preserve these programs for the next generation, they're going to disappear and all the money is going to go to fraudsters. Go ahead.
Speaker 6 (28:04):
[inaudible 00:28:00] So what exactly would that look like? Dr. Oz has mentioned that jail sentences aren't necessarily the right way to go, but is there a way possible it's going be back? Ways to get refunds? Do you want restrictions on that? And then I have a follow-up question.
JD Vance (28:19):
I mean, look, there are certainly ways to claw some of the money back. It depends on the circumstances of the case. When you're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars potentially in fraud, that's a big universe of cases. There are different ways of anticipating it. You heard Dr. Oz say some of these people, they will commit a crime and then leave the country. Obviously, we're not going to prosecute people who aren't even in the United States anymore. But I really do think that criminal penalties for some of these fraud cases have to happen. We have to make sure that we stop the fraud being committed against the American people. And if you violate the law and the process of defrauding American citizens, you ought to face the full consequences of the law.
Speaker 6 (28:52):
And then on [inaudible 00:28:54] there would be a new assistant attorney general position?
JD Vance (29:03):
Yep.
Speaker 6 (29:03):
Advance this effort. Can you give me an update on timeline for when we might see a name announced when you want Senate to start working a confirmation on that?
JD Vance (29:07):
Yeah, so I believe we have the name announced. I want to say that Colin is on The Hill, maybe today or yesterday. Colin will be the new AAG to help us combat fraud. I believe he's had great meetings all over The Hill today as part of the Senate confirmation process. I think he's impressed a lot of people. He's certainly impressed me. And again, we have a whole-of-government approach. I mean, what Dr. Oz is doing at CMS is very, very hard work, but it's not the only thing. We're trying to buttress it with a whole-of-government approach.
(29:34)
Scott Bessent at Treasury is going to work on this. We're going to have our great Department of Justice work on this. We want to take this seriously because it's a serious problem for the American people and so we got to fix it. Go ahead.
Speaker 5 (29:44):
Thank you. Will the way that you're handling fraud in Minnesota by withholding this Medicaid reimbursement serve as a playbook for how you'll handle it in other states or are there other tools that you'll be using [inaudible 00:29:55]
JD Vance (29:54):
Well, I think you can. Certainly, there are certain things that we're doing in Minneapolis and Minnesota that we're not
JD Vance (30:00):
... going to be able to do in other parts of the country because the fraud is going to be different in each place.
(30:04)
But yeah, I think this basic model of saying to people, "Hey, you get a massive amount of money to provide a service to people. Did you actually provide that service?" The fact that it's even controversial that we're asking these questions as a government goes to show how much the culture of fraud has permeated Washington D.C.
(30:24)
Think about this. We're talking about people who take money from autistic children. They pretend their children or some other person's kid is autistic, they collect a fat check, they don't provide an ounce of services, and then the very money that's supposed to go to needy kids isn't there anymore to help those needy children.
(30:43)
The fact that we have so normalized this, and the fact that I guarantee there are going to be voices in the media, there are going to be voices in the state of Minnesota who say, "This is hurting children." No, it's hurting fraudsters. The way to protect kids is to go after those fraudsters, which is what we're doing.
(31:01)
Sir.
Press (31:01):
[inaudible 00:31:02] Mr. Vice President. Thank you for taking questions.
(31:04)
Dr. Oz mentioned the word "guardrails" when it comes to this. Can we expect to see the federal government look to implement new guardrails to prevent the normalization of fraud [inaudible 00:31:14] continuing, and do you believe it would be more effective for states that you're investigating to put up guardrails? Do you think that the best way to do it would be a mixture? And what message should a move like this which you're announcing today send to other states that might be under the microscope?
JD Vance (31:28):
I mean, look, we would love to better work with the states here. We need the states to combat this fraud. And frankly, if Minnesota had done a better job of combating the fraud, we would not be here at this press conference today. We'd send out a letter celebrating the fact that Minnesota had worked with us to cut down on some of the fraud.
(31:45)
I'll let Dr. Oz speak a little bit more to that question, but look, the best way for this to work would be for the federal government to work with the state governments. We'd love for that to happen. I think you're going to see that in some states, even some blue states, but you're not going to see it in others.
Mehmet Oz (31:59):
The Working Family Tax Cut legislation for the first time in a long time aligned the president and vice president with the governor so they have the same goal. So we've been talking to the states a lot.
(32:08)
We are generating some frameworks that we believe states could apply. Medicaid is run by the state. They know their most vulnerable populations well. It's different than Alaska on the North Shore slope where you can't get there this time of year, to southern Alabama, lower Alabama, or LA as they call it. But the reality is there are similarities that govern some of these programs, especially the ones that are high risk, and so we are going to share those best practices. But the techniques that we're using in Minnesota can be applied in other states, but it's the fraud, however, that will drive that.
(32:38)
And so there are some states; I mentioned Florida. That's a red state where there's a big fraud problem in the southern part. They're trying to get their arms around it. We've sent a letter to Minnesota, which has a Republican senator. We're very concerned about New York, where the single most prominent job in New York is a personal care service. Retail is not the top job in New York anymore. And in California there are more hospices, I believe, in Los Angeles County alone than the rest of the country.
(33:02)
So these are aberrancies that are hard for the states sometimes to see, but your first inclination if you're the vice president, and he's running a task force, is to look at those areas and say, "How can you ignore that kind of a discrepancy, especially when there's been a massive uptick in some of these services in a short period of time?"
JD Vance (33:19):
Great. We'll take just one more question here, sir.
Press (33:31):
What is your message to the people of Minnesota who are still upset by the ICE surge as well? This is just one more thing on top of that.
JD Vance (33:31):
Well, first of all, I think our message to the people of Minnesota is that we love them. There are our fellow citizens. We're trying to do right by them. And part of the reason, in fact, the main reason that we're doing this is that we want to make sure that the people of Minnesota have access to the services that they're entitled to. We want poor kids in Minnesota, lower income families in Minnesota to be able to get the healthcare that they need. We got to stop the fraud in order to make sure that happens. We want to make sure that if you have a special needs kid and we have a program set up to help that special needs kid, that the money goes to the special needs family, not to a fraudster who's getting rich off the generosity of American taxpayers.
(34:09)
Now, you talk about the ICE surge. Again, I think it goes back to the question I just answered, which is so much of what is broken in Minnesota, as far as I can tell, is a lack of cooperation between the state government and the federal government. If you look at any blue city or any blue state, or red city or red state, the immigration enforcement that we were doing was going smoothly. We'd find out that there was an illegal alien sex offender in a prison, we'd show up, we'd arrest that person, and we'd send them out of our country. Or maybe that person was a repeat offender and they were out of prison; the local authorities would say, "You know what? Go to this person's address and arrest this guy because we want that violent criminal out of our community."
(34:50)
What was so bizarre about Minneapolis is that it was one of the few places in the entire country where they said, "No, no, no. We're not going to help the federal government get illegal alien sex traffickers out of our community. We are going to do everything that we can to prevent federal immigration enforcement from happening even when you're going after the very worst of the very worst."
(35:12)
Similarly, I would think that if I was the governor or a leader in Minnesota, I would want the benefits that ought by right to go to needy children. I want them to go to those needy children and not to fraudsters, whether they're from the Somali community or anywhere else. But no, we haven't gotten the cooperation.
(35:28)
So what I would say to the people of Minnesota is that we want to do right by you. We think you deserve better public services. We think you deserve to have the benefits that you're actually entitled to. And that's why we're doing this. And we encourage everybody in Minnesota, whatever their political affiliation, to work on the state government a little bit, because if we had some better cooperation, we could have common sense immigration enforcement, we could also have less money going to fraudsters, which I would think would be a bipartisan issue.
(35:57)
Thank you all.
Press (35:58):
Vice President, on [inaudible 00:36:03]-
(35:58)
[inaudible 00:36:02] did you know that Americans were victims?
(36:03)
Thank you.
(36:03)
[inaudible 00:36:13].