California Gov. Gavin Newsom's office has demanded a civil rights investigation of Dr. Mehmet Oz, saying he discriminated against Armenians in a video claiming hospice fraud in Los Angeles. The complaint was filed Thursday, after Oz posted a video on social media made in front of an Armenian bakery in Los Angeles, the
AP reports. In it, he alleges that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud has taken place in the city and that "quite a bit of it" was run by "the Russian Armenian mafia." Oz is President Trump's administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which certifies hospice providers to accept patients on government-subsidized health insurance.
The Democrat's office argues 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. His office said the claims caused harm by dampening business at the bakery shown in the video. "Mafia? There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We're just hardworking business owners," Movses Bislamyan, whose family-owned bakery appears in Oz's video, told KABC-TV. "I don't understand why he's mentioning just Armenians." Oz and the agency have not released details about the fraud he's talking about. Earlier in the week, Newsom acknowledged fraud exists but said the state has been working to stop it. "We've identified and cracked down on hospice fraud for years, taking real action to protect patients and taxpayers," he said in a statement.
Oz's video shows him visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood 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. 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 US from Turkey. Aram Hamparian of the Armenian National Committee of America said that Oz's comments invoke "easy stereotypes" and that his connections to Turkey are concerning. That nation's government does not acknowledge the killing and deportation of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 1900s, known as the Armenian genocide.
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