Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, attends a news conference to discuss fraud prevention on Jan. 9 in Los Angeles. In comments this week, he alleges that members of the Southern California Armenian community orchestrated large-scale health care fraud.

Earlier this week, Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, sent shock waves through Southern California’s Armenian American community when he engaged in a blatant act of ethnic profiling.

Touring Van Nuys, Oz casually told reporters, “There’s roughly $3.5 billion of fraud taking place here in Los Angeles, in hospice and home care. It’s run, quite a bit of it, by the Russian Armenian mafia, you notice the lettering and language behind me.” Oz then gestured to the Armenian-language signage behind him, including one advertising a family bakery. 

As part of the Trump administration’s efforts to combat health care fraud and recoup billions of dollars in misused public funds, Oz’s startling suggestion that a sign with Armenian letters was itself proof of corruption runs counter to American ideals. By conflating language and culture with criminality, he has employed dangerous, broad-brush thinking. 

Advertisement

Article continues below this ad

The most egregious aspect of his statement was the reckless way a federal official could stigmatize an entire ethnic group. Instead of targeting individuals based on specific evidence, Oz, a Turkish American who holds dual citizenship, put........

© San Francisco Chronicle