Dr. Oz says patients are being scammed to go into hospice instead of receiving medical care

(LifeSiteNews) — People are being put in hospice care without their knowledge and deprived of life-saving medical treatments they would otherwise receive through Medicare.   

“People are put on hospice who don’t know it. They don’t realize it. And so now they don’t have access to regular Medicare anymore,” Dr. Mehmet Oz, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator, said in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek. 

“According to Oz, it’s a system built on perverse incentives: clinics — many created overnight — bill Medicare for terminal care, and doctors are paid to sign people onto hospice, even when they are not terminal,” Jekielek noted on X. 

“So, people are dying because they can’t get care because they were falsely tricked into being on hospice,” Oz said. 

“Doctors are being paid to send people inappropriately to hospice. That’s a problem, because if you’re put into hospice, you actually give up the rest of your healthcare protection,” Oz explained. “You no longer get traditional Medicare benefits because you’re in hospice; you’re dying. So, we’re not going to pay all these extra expenses for things that aren’t going to benefit you because you’ve decided to pull back.”

“I began to look into how this could possibly happen. How is it that we’ve gotten seven times more hospice in California over the last several years? Do we have seven times more people dying? What’s going on here?” Dr. Oz asked. 

“And you begin to realize it’s systemic fraud,” Oz said.

“Everyone decided not to do anything about this,” Oz suggested. “We’re not going to look at it. It’s too painful, too difficult. Maybe some groups may benefit financially from not checking into this.” 

“The doctors are getting engaged so much in the hospice that it’s beginning to undermine the basic ethos of the healthcare profession,” he added. 

Oz also detailed how the hospice industry is so lucrative in California that even plumbers and carpenters are getting in on the act as side gigs.

“What’s happened in California is a tolerance and acceptance of fraud,” @DrOz told me in a recent interview, describing widespread hospice scams that have proliferated in California, especially in LA County.

He estimates there’s as much as $4 billion in hospice and… pic.twitter.com/wfs7P78UKB

— Jan Jekielek (@JanJekielek) January 17, 2026

“What we’re seeing in Minnesota is the tip of the iceberg because it is dwarfed by what I saw in California, which is wholesale cultural malfeasance around healthcare,” said Oz, referencing recent reports of rampant fraud in the Northstar State. 

Dr. Oz “estimates there’s as much as $4 billion in hospice and home-healthcare fraud in California, fueled by providers billing Medicare for services never delivered and patients who should never have been enrolled,” Jekielek wrote.