Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. criticized his predecessor, Xavier Becerra, arguing that staffing reductions within the department's program integrity division left federal health programs vulnerable to widespread fraud and contributed to billions of dollars in improper payments.

Speaking during a recent event, Kennedy described what he said he found after taking over the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees trillions of dollars in annual federal health care spending.

"My predecessor Xavier Becerra. He, when he came into my agency, there were only 80 people in program integrity. 80 people."

Kennedy said those employees were responsible for monitoring an enormous volume of federal transactions.

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"This is for 50 states and five territories. These are the people who are monitoring $2.2 trillion in payments annually from my agency, we do 4 million transactions a day."

According to Kennedy, he believes the staffing level was already inadequate before additional personnel were reassigned.

"There's only 80 people looking at those."

He then alleged that Becerra significantly reduced the size of the unit after taking office.

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"Xavier Becerra came in and transferred 76 of them out, so that when I came in, there's only six people who are in charge of all program integrity for my department."

Kennedy argued that the reduction in oversight created an opportunity for fraudulent actors to exploit federal health care programs.

"And it was an invitation for the fraudsters to come in and steal everything."

He pointed to hospice programs in Los Angeles as one example of what he described as widespread fraud.

"And that's why we have this hospice program."

Kennedy said his department has since shut down thousands of hospice operations that he alleged were fraudulently billing the government.

"We've closed closed 1000s of hospices here in Los Angeles because they didn't have patience."

He claimed those operations were submitting claims for nonexistent patients.

"They were just billing us $6,000 a month for phony accounts."

Kennedy also alleged that fraudulent activity extended beyond hospice care.

"And the durable medical equipment fraud, 10s of billions of dollars here in Los Angeles County, autism services 10s of billions of dollars all stolen because nobody was minding the store."

A significant portion of Kennedy's remarks focused on what he described as a payment policy implemented under Becerra's leadership.

According to Kennedy, the policy instructed the agency to pay suspicious claims first and attempt to recover the money later.

"Xavier Becerra came in and he instituted a program called Pay and Chase."

Kennedy explained how he said the policy functioned.

"What that means is when we get an invoice from a hospice that we know is fraudulent, we know that hospice is not treating patients. They've been busted before. We have algorithms that can identify that this is almost certainly a fraudulent case."

Despite those indicators, Kennedy said the department was instructed to process the payments.

"His policy was: you pay them and then you chase it."

He argued that recovering those funds after payment rarely proved successful.

"You go back and try to claw it back, which of course never happens."

Kennedy described the policy as fundamentally flawed and said his administration has eliminated it.

"This was an insane policy. We shut that down."

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Throughout his remarks, Kennedy argued that restoring stronger oversight and expanding fraud prevention efforts are necessary to protect taxpayer dollars.

He contended that rebuilding the department's program integrity operations and ending what he described as ineffective payment practices are central to preventing future fraud involving federal health care programs.

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