Who exactly is fighting hospice fraud in – Latest News
Empty storefronts. Facilities that don’t exist. Addresses purported to accommodate a dozen hospices.
All billing the federal authorities –– primarily from California.
Signs of fraud don’t get a lot clearer than that.
Plaudits to Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Trump administration for shifting to close down the brazen grift.
Oz and his workforce have halted Medicare funds to sketchy hospice suppliers –– many in Los Angeles –– with Oz including that “every single hospice in California is now under investigation.”
Good.
California officers, in the meantime, have dismissed proof of rampant hospice fraud, known as their own lax oversight stellar, and attacked Dr. Oz as racist for raising the difficulty.
Talk about falling short of the second.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrats ought to drop the empty defenses, stop the finger-pointing, finish the trouble to gaslight Californians –– and be part of the combat in opposition to fraud.
Newsom at an occasion to advertise his e book, “Young Man in a Hurry” on the Streicker Cultural Center, in New York, on February 24, 2026. AFP by way of Getty Images
Every Californian, regardless of place or political celebration, ought to be capable to agree: Prosecutors need to stop those that invoice taxpayers for hospice providers by no means rendered.
The transgressors ought to face penalties, not get pleasure from a complimentary de facto protection workforce in the shape of the governor and his allies.
And taxpayers deserve safety and restitution, not dismissal from a governor consumed by anti-Trumpism and his own presidential ambition.
Newsom claimed in January that his workforce “identified and cracked down on hospice fraud for years, taking real action to protect patients and taxpayers.”
If that had been true –– or if such efforts had been efficient –– why did a California Post investigation simply discover obtrusive indicators of rampant fraud, from vacant buildings billing Medicare to a number of hospices claiming to operate from a single tackle?
Ira Byock, a prime palliative care doctor based mostly in Torrance, Calif., informed our reporter that obvious hospice fraud has surged in latest years.
“There are roughly 7,000 hospice programs across the US. There are 91 in Florida, 39 in New York –– and over 2,800 in California,” Byock stated.
So a lot for Newsom’s crackdown.
Rather than checking the numbers, the governor ridiculed the messenger.
“Amazing to watch Dr. Oz cosplay as a fraud fighter,” Newsom’s press workplace posted on X in January, alleging including whereas California was engaged in a hospice-fraud crackdown, Oz “was busy pitching ‘miracle’ horse supplements to insomniacs on late-night TV.”
It does make one surprise which of the 2 is a pitchman, and which a fraud fighter.
And lastly, the governor trotted out racist tropes in a associated meager effort to dismiss the fraud probe.
“Our office is reviewing reports that Dr. Mehmet Oz targeted the Armenian American community in Southern California recently — making racially charged claims of fraud outside Armenian owned businesses, including a popular bakery,” Newsom’s press workplace wrote on X in January.
Oh, please.
It’s not too late for the governor and his erstwhile allies to reverse course, concede the extent of the hospice-fraud racket, and be part of the the trigger of rooting it out.
Californians, and taxpayers, ought to have a clear thought: Who is abiding –– even defending –– the fraud epidemic in California, and who is fighting it?
