At Thursday’s CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference), held in 2026 by the American Conservative Union (ACU) in Texas, the top officials at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator (CMS) sat down with ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp to discuss how MAHA (Make America Healthy Again) looks in terms of policy – from the efforts to combat waste, fraud, and abuse, to cutting off harms to children and teens, to making necessary medicines affordable and safe.
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz was joined by his Chief of Staff/Deputy Administrator Stephanie Carlton, and CMS Director of Medicare/Deputy Administrator Chris Klomp, who took each of those policy points and expounded on how they are being transformed for the benefit of all Americans and American health care.
Dr. Oz said, “Keeping our country healthy is one of the best investments we can make as a nation. If you just get folks healthy, they want to keep going at what they’re already doing in life. It’s worth about a trillion dollars for the economy.”
Right out the gate, Oz updated everyone on what he said Americans are watching closely: The rampant Medicaid and Medicare fraud and abuse. Oz warned the attendees that it is not only robbery of a person’s financial fortunes, but of their health.
Let me start with something that is on all of your minds, because we’ve been hearing from you about it: which is the fraud, the waste and the abuse, which we believe is taking $100 billion out of our health care system. But more than the money, if you’re willing to steal someone’s cash, you’re willing to steal their health and inhibit their life. And we’re witnessing this happen in states around the country. Our administration has sent letters to Minnesota. You saw what happened with civilians and others taking advantage of the system.
An autism program was supposed to be three million. They lied. They got mothers to lie that their kids were autistic. That’s now a $400 million budget. And that’s the tip of the iceberg. A fair amount of money has been given to them already to make sure that they fix some of their past billing, but there’s lots going on.
Minnesota is not the only state in the crosshairs. As Oz alleged in a previous interview, when it comes to fraud, California is the varsity team. “Los Angeles, the city of Los Angeles, has one-third of all the hospices in the entire country, Oz said. “Not California, literally, in the entire country, long-term hospices are in Los Angeles. That’s impossible unless you’re literally looking the other way, pretending it’s not happening.”
New York State is coming to the forefront with its fraudulent system of employing relatives and friends as personal care assistants, when they are neither licensed to do the work, nor is there any actual care given, Oz said on Thursday.
We’re seeing fraud in New York State where the number one job of all is not retail. You think about that happening on Fifth Avenue. The number one job in New York State now is being a personal care assistant. Basically, you call up and say, I think that I need help getting my grocery’s upstairs. So, I’m going to hire my son, and federal taxpayers are picking up a fair amount of the tab, most of the tab, and now that’s become a jobs program in New York State.
And where grift occurs, greater corruption follows. Now, the New York labor unions want to pull these “workers” into the fold in order to protect their jobs. Oz continued:
I’m concerned, because we’re hearing that unions are trying to get involved, unionize these folks, which just becomes further grift on the system. And again, this is not a flaw for many. It’s a feature of what they’re doing. When they are able to do things that allow more individuals to get on these programs, by law, when you sign someone up for Medicaid, you also have to offer them voter registration.
BACKGROUND ON THE FRAUD: Oversight Committee Investigates Rampant California Hospice Fraud – Newsom ‘Aware’ of Problem for Years
‘That Is Stopping Today’: VP Vance, Dr. Oz Announce Pause in Medicaid Payments to MN Over Fraud
(You can read more of RedState’s coverage here.)
But don’t just think this is occurring in blue states. Florida has an entire cottage industry of medical equipment suppliers.
“It’s happening all over the country,” Oz said. “South Florida has twice as many durable medical equipment suppliers as McDonald’s. And then these guys sell wheelchairs and knee braces. Now, one unified factor.”
Of course, it’s not only Americans who are robbing other Americans. Foreign cartels, entities, and governments have become fully engaged, and they are specific to a region, Dr. Oz said.
There are foreign governments involved in some of these activities. I want you to recognize that. We have Cubans involved in the South Florida. We have Russian Mafia in California. We have Chinese involvement in Flushing, Queens, where I happened to visit recently, was involved in the boroughs. And we have corruption in Somalis that we mentioned in Minnesota. So, there are foreign governments or foreign nationals being involved in all these activities. Medicare is a pinata.
Which is why Oz and VP JD Vance’s Fraud Task Force have plans in the works to aggressively shut down these corrupt systems.
The President created a Task Force, Matt, he announced it during the State of the Union address. Vice President Vance is heading that task force. We had a press conference the day after the State of the Union. The first thing out of the gate was to make sure everyone knew we were going to put a national moratorium on new suppliers of medical equipment so you can’t scam us anymore. And we will not stop until we evict this corruption. It’s worth doing this, in addition to the fact that our most vulnerable deserve it.
More CPAC 2026: CPAC 2026: Dep. Attorney General Todd Blanche Talks Real Justice and Restoring Constitutional Governance
CPAC 2026: Border Czar Tom Homan Puts the Hammer Down
Oz turned the floor over to Chris Klomp, who talked about Trump Rx and the importance of creating affordable avenues for pharmaceuticals for those who truly need it.
Klomp said:
What was the problem? Look, everyone here knows that President Trump inherited an unaffordability crisis, but he’s working to fix it. Let me give you an example of what’s happening. Right now, America develops life-saving medications only for the rest of the world to get them for a fraction of the cost. We paid three times what citizens of every other wealthy nation have planned to pay for the drugs that we developed here in the United States. That’s more than half of our money. That’s a global ripoff, and that now ends.
With TrumpRx, the president has employed Most-Favored-Nation pricing, to bring huge cost savings to Americans, especially the Americans who can least afford it — our elders and others on fixed incomes.
There’s a personal cost to this, though. It’s not just big numbers we talked about. One in four Americans show up to the pharmacy counter, and they don’t pick up their prescription because they can’t afford it. That’s a moral failure. That’s a global travesty, and that ends as well with one simple principle. MFN, most favored nation policy led by President Trump. What does that mean? It means that we will not pay more for a drug than any other wealthy country. That’s it. Starting now.
Klomp addressed the naysayers to this methodology, but pointed to the success.
So already, folks said this couldn’t be done, by the way. We’ve negotiated with 17 initial pharmaceutical companies, representing the majority of the pharmaceutical industry. Already we’re seeing other countries show up, and they understand, they got the message. If you want to continue to access America’s life-saving innovations, you’re going to pay your fair share. In the process, we’ve seen GLP-1s, life-saving GLP-1s that help with diabetes and chronic metabolic disease, come down by half. Fertility drugs for families that are trying to start their family that have come down by as much as 68 percent. This is affordability in the pockets of every American. This is fairness. This is the principle of an America-first negotiator that is President Trump, and that’s what we’re seeing most favorably nationwide.
Klomp said that American health care coverage is twice as expensive as any other country: first, second or third-world. Part of that is because, “we’re twice as fat as every country on the planet.”
And that is the core of the MAHA movement. We must become healthier as a nation. It’s not only good for you and your family, the people you love, but it’s actually a patriotic duty at this point to stay healthy. You’ll enjoy more anyway, but we can’t keep up. Our life expectancy is dropping despite these investments.
Stephanie Carlson spoke to the changes in the dietary guidelines, and how many of the policies: like the vaccine schedule and the transgender cult were dictated by lobbyists who had their eyes on the bottom line, not the health of America’s children. Carlson said that the first rule for our country’s children should “very simple. First, do no harm.” She assessed that it’s harder to raise healthy children today than a generation ago. A major reason for this: a food system that is actively designed to keep us unhealthy.
It’s because the system is actually getting to have the say. If you think about it, our grocery stores are flooded with all the processed food. They’re easier to find than fruits and vegetables are in places. We’ve traded out physical activity, walking around outside, playing outside, for screen time. And we have a system that is rewarded and paid for the pandemic. When you get sick, instead of focusing on a cure, that system is making us sicker. Let me tell you this; the Trump administration is here to take on that system, and we’re doing it.
The first thing we did was take on the food industry in Washington. All the lobbyists that made dietary guidelines confusing, that ended up influencing the advice so that you would be forced to make certain decisions. And this changed all that last year. To be a kid that way, it’s going to be easier to raise healthy kids in America, and also it’s going to be easier to live your fullest and best life as an American.
Oz wanted to ensure he spoke to the CPAC crowd about the CMS gains for average Americans.
The most ambitious health legislation ever was the president’s signature working out his tax cut legislation. And in that legislation, there are two things that I want you to have on your radar. And I say this to you as CPAC members. You’re the ones who go out and talk about this at the water cooler or the bar, wherever these conversations happen. Issue number one: the president felt that America does best when it works. And so in the legislation, we have a work requirement for people to get free health insurance on that issue.
As the One Big Beautiful Law gets implemented, Americans are coming to the realization of its benefits to those long ignored or forgotten. Oz said:
This was not done to be mean to people who are able-bodied on Medicaid. They were never supposed to be on Medicaid. It’s become the norm. And so, the president said, and Congress passed the law, that you’ve got to work 20 hours a week, or volunteer, or get an education. Community engagement makes yourself better. So, this administration has gone out there. We’ve negotiated contracts. We’ve done this to get it done by the end of this year, so that starting January 1st, to get the current free health coverage, you have to do something to help yourself.
And for rural Americans, CMS is seeking to expand health options so that quality medical care is not so far away. Dr. Oz asked how many of the audience live in rural America, and noted the show of hands. “About 20 percent of the odds,” he said, “statistically, 60 million people.”
Another benefit of the One Big Beautiful Law is that it has carved out $15 billion for rural health care. Not just to build or sustain hospitals, but to “to right-size, to get it back up to where the rest of the country is,” Oz said.
Because life expectancy in rural America continues to shrink. We are dramatically going to change that. This money is out in your states; talk to your governors to make sure the money goes out into the homeland, goes into the rural areas where you can do good to bring in more health care workers, with big technologies that can be beneficial. We don’t want people dying because they grew up in the wrong zip code.
Klomp then broached an inconvenient truth: China and their war against our intellectual property. The CCP manufactures 40 percent of the world’s pharmaceuticals, and they are not doing it for the good of mankind. Klomp said.
We face a national security threat right now that hasn’t been named meaningfully until President Trump. It’s not one of missiles and tanks, it’s of laboratories and life-saving medications. It’s a war right now with China on American innovation in biotechnology.
Why is it such a big deal? Remember COVID? If you control people’s health and the means to maintain or assist it, you control a population, and ultimately a nation.
Klomp continued:
Why is this such a big deal? Well, while we were sleeping, China was planning and they were plotting and they were growing. Less than a decade ago, they counted for about three percent of all new pharmaceuticals coming to market. This year, they’re verging on 40 percent. Why should you care? Because they’re learning from us, they’re stealing our IP, and there are real threats. This isn’t just lack of access, this isn’t just lack of market share. This is trillions of dollars of American IP being siphoned off that we lose. We’ll lose our physicians, we lose our best scientists. Worse, we lose control of our destiny. We lose control of lifesaving medications to a foreign country, a foreign power that does not share our values, but will dictate what medicines are made and who will get them.
Chilling stuff, but part of the MAHA agenda is to address this deficit. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has been tasked with invigorating American innovation in this area. Klomp said:
There is an America first agenda right now, led by Marty Makary, the Commissioner of the FDA, who’s focused on this. We choose to believe in American exceptionalism. We choose to believe that America is at its greatest when you back us into a corner. And right now, China is trying to do just that. And it’s been doing that for the last several years until now.
The war with China began a long time ago, centered around our innovation and biotechnology. American innovators exist, and the technology exists to shorten the window, as Klomp explained.
Now we’re focused on innovating. There are things that we can do. No longer should we take 15 years to bring a new molecule to market, a new life-saving medication. It’s time for a new medicine to moon shot. Instead of the slog of 15 years, we should be springing four to five. We should cut the price in half and lower. We need to bring new innovations in. We need to protect our IP. We need to incentivize, not bureaucracy, but speed in American innovation. That’s exactly what the president has called for. It’s exactly what we’re doing so that we can overcome this threat.
Oz also addressed the mental health of our nation, and the woke indoctrination that is stealing the joy of living.
What if we stop telling our kids that the world is going to end next year? What if we stop telling our kids that all their parents and grandparents are racist, who are hateful people, and that America is this rancid place to afford? I think we create a lot of anxiety in our kids with all this crap that’s covered through phones and TV sets and everything else. I think that’s almost like the great reset that’s going on. There’s something healthy about stopping to consume all that garbage.
Just as Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche spoke earlier on Thursday of hope in the future of the American justice system, Oz expressed hope for Americans health and our health care systems.
I look at our health care system and our country’s health, and I am more optimistic today than ever before in my life. There’s a bunch of rational reasons for this. There’s a fine line of conviction and hallucination. Other people have to see it for it to be real and a vision. But we have so many tools.
Oz said:
Talk about us, talk about the things you’ve heard up here. Don’t let folks out there tell you false narratives, and they will. Defend what we know deep in our hearts and our souls to be true. There is a North Star and we’re following, and we will not be hindered or hobbled in any way as we pursue that.
God bless You.
He ended his remarks by encouraging the CPAC audience to share this hope and the information they have learned. Like Blanche, he affirmed it is We The People who will make a difference and turn the tide.
RedState will provide continuing coverage of CPAC 2026 from Dallas, TX. Stay tuned, readers!
Editor’s Note: The Democrats are doing everything in their power to undermine the integrity of our elections.
Help us tell the truth about the SAVE America Act and how it will prevent voter fraud. Join RedState VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership.
