Dr. Oz and Gavin Newsom spar again after over $800M barred for Calif. healthcare

Dr. Mehmet Oz, the TV personality turned Trump administration employee, just signed off on a mass deferral of Medicaid payments to California –– adding fuel to the fire that already exists between Gov. Gavin Newsom and the celebrity physician. 

On Monday, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a decision to halt over $1 billion in Medicaid funding to California and Minnesota. Most of that pot of money, $867.5 million, was intended for the Golden State. Kennedy is blocking another $199 million from Minnesota, whose governor, Tim Walz, was the running mate on Kamala Harris' presidential ticket in 2024.

HHS said in a news release the decision was made to further the Trump administration's "effort to combat fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid and safeguard federal taxpayer dollars." Oz, a cardiothoracic surgeon, has been the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, or CMS, since President Trump appointed him in 2025.

In a release, the Department of Health and Human Services explained that the money is paused until California provides the necessary documentation to support specific Medicaid claims. The agency said it reviewed claims in California for certain in-home care programs and found that the spending went up in ways that "far exceeded national trends."

"If Gov. Gavin Newsom or Gov. Tim Walz wants this funding released, all they have to do is provide basic documentation showing that these services are legitimate and not fraudulent," Kennedy said at a news conference.

Oz said at the same press conference that California's spending "doesn't make sense."

"We are committed to supporting this program, to cleaning up the fraud in healthcare," he said. "We need states to be true partners." 

Newsom's office said it is ready to collaborate with CMS but also wrote on X that blocking the funding is a "recycled political stunt." The post quoted a previous post from mid-May, in which Newsom's office declared, "We hate fraud. But that's NOT what this is," and argued that California's costs are higher because the state prioritizes in-home care over inpatient facilities. 

State Attorney General Rob Bonta's office said he is looking into cases of fraud.

Oz controls the purse strings of the agency that provides healthcare to 160 million Americans. Since he took charge last year, the Trump administration has made "waste" and "fraud" a core part of its approach to funding, including last year's push to require able-bodied individuals to provide proof that they are working if they want to receive Medicaid coverage.

Oz has previously sparred with Newsom. The governor filed a civil rights complaint against Oz earlier this year after Oz blamed Armenians living in Los Angeles for over $3 billion in hospice fraud. The hospice industry has been under fire for the past several years, after a Los Angeles Times investigation found widespread fraud in the city related to hospice care claims, totaling up to hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2021, the state justice department charged 109 people with fraud.

"Such racially charged and false public statements by anyone involved in administering these critical federal healthcare programs seriously risks chilling participation in those programs by individuals targeted by the statements," Newsom wrote in response to Oz's claim.

Oz fired back on his social media saying that he will "keep doing the actual work: going after fraudsters, period."

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