Dr. Mehmet Oz is fast becoming a taxpayer’s dream at the helm of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

Fighting “waste, fraud, and abuse” isn’t just a tired slogan to him — it’s a mandate. And he’s enforcing it. 

He arrived with a reputation as the new sheriff in town: Few physicians would want to take on the task of digging through a toxic pile of fraud, where scammers long enjoyed siphoning billions from taxpayers.

His mandate was straightforward: Visit the nation’s worst hotspots — of which there is no shortage. California, of course, ranked at the top, having earned a reputation as the epicenter of healthcare fraud.

The public mood reflected that dark reality. Outrage was on full display across social media. One particularly cynical joke captured it: Maybe the state’s tourism brochure should be updated: “Come visit the burned-out homes, ghost hospice centers, and bureaucrats operating ‘auto-pen’ payments to fraudsters.”

Into that mess stepped Dr. Oz.

He took a page from Elon Musk’s playbook, setting in motion the “DOGE-ing” of California with data-detection tools.

Fraudsters, even the most seasoned “criminal enterprises,” were no match for AI systems that never sleep and never miss a detection line — processing millions of data points and cross-referencing hundreds of thousands of claims.

Dr. Oz didn’t have to look far to find the most egregious activity. Taxpayers got an eyeful as the physician and federal agents zeroed in on one of the most financially abusive — and remarkably amateurish targets: the hospice and homecare industry.

He encountered a labyrinth of criminal clusters — but, to taxpayers’ satisfaction, systematically organized into red flags by AI.

Not one to remain in a cubicle, Dr. Oz and his federal agents made a targeted on-site visit, sparking statewide outrage at the sheer scale of fraud and brazen scheme perpetrated on taxpayers. 

They stood outside a dilapidated strip mall — as media cameras rolled — exposing an allegedly illicit operation: 42 so-called “hospices” allegedly clustered within a four-block radius. Yet taxpayers were left, unwittingly, lining the pockets of scammers — year after year.

The “anomalies” should have been impossible to miss: Red flags waving in plain sight that even the most indifferent bureaucracy should have caught — except on Governor Gavin Newsom’s watch: Patients enrolled who were not terminally ill, still listed year after year; identities tied to stolen personal data; billing submitted for services never rendered, often tied to facilities that did not exist; and sudden, unexplained spikes in claims activity.

Those billing scams left taxpayers staring at a financial crime scene, wondering how billions of their dollars vanished into what amounted to a cash-grab for scammers.

Within just 10 weeks of arriving, Dr. Oz shut off the federal cash spigot to hundreds of allegedly fake hospices. What investigators uncovered was staggering: 210 “active agencies” packed into a single square mile: An absurd concentration that defied both medical reality and common sense.

To taxpayers, it looked like bureaucrats asleep at the administrative wheel, while everyone else paid for the incompetence.

Dr. Oz, reviewing the fraud trail, reportedly reacted with disbelief after discovering that several dozen hospice companies were registered to the very same building. “How could anyone ignore this type of brazen fraud?” he asked. That is — until now.

Intrepid reporter Nick Shirley also made a media splash, bringing his YouTube camera to document “hospice clusters” in Los Angeles. Filming from a strip mall in the San Fernado Valley, he highlighted the glaring absence of patients — and, just as strikingly, any medical infrastructure to treat them. 

But what really drove social media commentary wasn’t what was missing from the facilities — it was what was parked outside: a Tesla Cybertruck sat in one lot, and a BMW M8 was spotted speeding away from another after the reporter’s arrival. 

Those six-figure vehicles — stark symbols of lavish government spending — closely mirrored the types of anomalies Dr. Oz’s AI-detection systems are already flagging across Medicare and Medi-Cal.

As for the deeper human toll, Dr. Oz stressed: Healthcare “fraud isn’t just about stealing your tax dollars — in some cases, it’s about stealing your life.”

Robyn Dolgin is an opinion writer and former news wire reporter.