Bronx, New York — When President Trump nominated nursing home magnate Benjamin Landa as ambassador to Hungary last October, it looked like a straightforward reward for a loyal donor. One month earlier, Landa had cut a $5 million check to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. Two months later, he had a nomination letter from the White House. What followed was considerably more complicated. Within weeks of the nomination, the inspector general of Trump’s own Department of Health and Human Services issued an audit finding that a Bronx nursing home Landa co-owns — Pinnacle Multicare Nursing and Rehabilitation Center —…
Author: Ahuva S
The federal government’s state-level Medicaid fraud enforcement network had a strong year in 2025, recovering nearly $2 billion in stolen and misspent funds — and nursing homes contributed a significant slice of the losses that investigators had to chase down. A new annual report from the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) tallied the work of all 53 Medicaid Fraud Control Units (MFCUs) across the country for fiscal year 2025. The results show a system producing results: criminal and civil recoveries combined totaled $1.99 billion, with every dollar spent on MFCUs returning $4.64 to federal…
Indianapolis, Indiana — Indiana’s nursing homes are getting some long-overdue relief. Governor Mike Braun signed House Enrolled Act 1277 into law on March 12, 2026, moving long-stay nursing home residents away from the state’s managed care program and back to a direct payment model — a change the industry has been pushing for since the current system launched two years ago. The legislation targets Indiana’s “PathWays for Aging” program, which launched in 2024 with the goal of bringing all Medicaid-eligible seniors under managed care contracts held by major insurers including UnitedHealthcare, Humana, and Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The…
Uniondale, New York — When a nursing home resident can’t speak for themselves, some families are turning to small cameras to speak for them. But in New York, the law offers no clear answer on whether that’s even allowed — and two competing bills in Albany could decide the question before the year is out. So-called “granny cams” — small surveillance devices placed by family members inside nursing home rooms — have become a flashpoint in long-term care. Seventeen states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Illinois, and Texas, have enacted laws explicitly permitting the practice under certain conditions. New York has…
Washington, D.C. — A federal appeals court is sitting on a decision that could shake the foundation of how Medicare and Medicaid fraud gets prosecuted in nursing homes across the country. And according to legal experts in the post-acute care space, whatever that court decides, the case is almost certainly heading to the Supreme Court. At the center of the debate is the False Claims Act — the 160-year-old law that allows private citizens, known as whistleblowers or “qui tam” relators, to sue on behalf of the federal government when they suspect fraud against Medicare or Medicaid. It’s been one…
Washington, D.C. — A federal appeals court is sitting on a decision that could shake the foundation of how Medicare and Medicaid fraud gets prosecuted in nursing homes across the country. And according to legal experts in the post-acute care space, whatever that court decides, the case is almost certainly heading to the Supreme Court. At the center of the debate is the False Claims Act — the 160-year-old law that allows private citizens, known as whistleblowers or “qui tam” relators, to sue on behalf of the federal government when they suspect fraud against Medicare or Medicaid. It’s been one…
Albany, New York — Eleven nursing homes have shut down across New York since 2024, and nearly all of them were run by nonprofit hospital networks. Now, advocates are pushing state lawmakers to step in before more follow. Nonprofit long-term care operators are struggling to stay afloat under Medicaid reimbursement rates they say don’t come close to covering the cost of care. A coalition of advocates is calling on the state Legislature to direct at least $750 million toward nonprofit nursing homes as part of the 2026–2027 state budget — roughly 68% more than the $445 million allocated the prior…
A major study published in JAMA Internal Medicine has reached a conclusion that many in the skilled nursing world long suspected: Medicare’s requirement that patients spend at least three days in a hospital before their nursing home care is covered doesn’t actually improve patient outcomes. What it does do is keep people in hospital beds longer — and drive up costs for everyone involved. The research, which analyzed more than 670,000 traditional Medicare hospitalizations, used a natural experiment created when CMS reinstated the 3-day rule on May 12, 2023 — the day after the COVID-19 public health emergency ended and…
INDIANAPOLIS — Long-term care in the United States is approaching a breaking point, according to a newly released industry report — and the pressure is coming from every direction at once. OneAmerica Financial’s “2026 Long-Term Care Market Outlook,” published Monday, paints a stark picture of an industry caught between rising demand, a shrinking workforce, and a family caregiver system being stretched to its limits. The report, an annual survey of trends shaping the long-term care sector, identifies three defining themes for the year ahead: the rise of preventive long-term care, a caregiving workforce in crisis, and mounting pressure on unpaid…
Hartford, Connecticut — A Medicaid-funded program that helps thousands of Connecticut residents with disabilities live at home — rather than in nursing facilities — is on the chopping block, and the families who depend on it are fighting back. Gov. Ned Lamont has proposed eliminating Community First Choice, a state program that allows roughly 7,000 qualifying individuals to hire personal care attendants of their own choosing. Under his budget plan, those enrollees would be shifted to home- and community-based waiver programs, which often carry waiting lists stretching years — or in some cases, a decade. “For the governor to even…
