Los Angeles, California — The federal anti-fraud task force led by Vice President JD Vance has suspended 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in the Los Angeles area over suspected fraud totaling more than $600 million, according to officials familiar with the operation.
The number represents a 539% increase from the 70 suspensions reported at the beginning of April, signaling a rapid escalation in the government’s crackdown on what officials describe as one of the largest concentrations of healthcare fraud in the country.
“Where there is fraud, the task force will find it,” a spokesperson for Vance said. “We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them.”
A problem years in the making
The hospice fraud epidemic in Southern California didn’t appear overnight. Unscrupulous operators have long exploited Medicare’s hospice benefit by enrolling patients who aren’t terminally ill, billing for services never rendered, and paying kickbacks to recruiters who target vulnerable seniors at assisted living facilities.
Patients unknowingly enrolled in hospice sometimes discovered they’d lost access to curative treatments — including medications and life-sustaining therapies like dialysis — because hospice enrollment requires forgoing such care.
The enforcement action comes as California’s own regulatory response has stalled. Emergency regulations proposed after a 2022 state audit — meant to tighten hospice licensing requirements — still haven’t taken effect, despite a statutory deadline of January 1, 2026.
“I’m perplexed. My membership is perplexed as to why they didn’t go into effect,” said Sheila Clark, president and CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association. “If we don’t have these regulations, it’ll be open season again on hospice.”
Federal and state officials trade blame
CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz visited what he calls “ground zero” for hospice fraud — a stretch of Victory Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley where 42 hospices were registered in the immediate area. He returned this month to participate in a raid targeting providers accused of billing $50 million in false claims.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli accused California of failing to vet hospice providers when issuing licenses. State officials pushed back, with Governor Gavin Newsom writing on X that “the Trump Administration — home to the biggest fraudsters on Earth — is trying to blame California for issues with their federal programs.”
Industry leaders say both sides share responsibility. “The federal government, despite going after providers in California, has a role in determining whether entities can bill Medicare to begin with,” said Edo Banach, former head of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. “It is everybody’s problem.”
Why nursing homes should pay attention
When fraudulent hospice providers collapse, the patients they were supposedly serving — many of them nursing home residents — can lose continuity of care. And as the industry debates whether a national moratorium on new hospice enrollments is the right response, legitimate operators worry that broad enforcement actions could sweep up compliant providers alongside bad actors.
The task force has signaled it’s far from finished. A White House official warned: “These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase.”
