NEW YORK — A new front in the battle between California Gov. Gavin Newsom and the Trump administration has opened over a video in which Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visits Los Angeles and alleges members of its Armenian community orchestrated large-scale health care fraud.
The dayslong public scuffle on social media escalated on Thursday evening, when Newsom announced his office was filing a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services accusing Oz of discrimination.
Newsom's office argued in the complaint that Oz ''spewed baseless and racially charged allegations" that risked chilling participation in hospice and home care programs among the community targeted. The governor's office noted the claims had ''already caused real-world harm'' by dampening business at an Armenian bakery that is shown in the video.
Oz and CMS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint or the content of the video, and they haven't publicly shared details that confirm the fraud being alleged.
The video posted on social media earlier this week shows the CMS administrator visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and pointing to a four-block radius that he says is home to 42 hospices, suggesting potential fraud. He references a business that he says was part of a $16 million fraud scheme.
Then, while standing in front of a building that includes an Armenian bakery, he alleges that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud has taken place in Los Angeles and ''quite a bit of it'' was run by ''the Russian Armenian mafia.''
Oz describes the Armenian script on the businesses' signs while the camera pans to the bakery.
"You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect,'' says Oz, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. He also claims there ''has not been a lot of attention on these problems'' in California.
