The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has halted payments to more than 400 hospices in Los Angeles and across California, with the estimated fraud being greater than $600 million, according to the anti-fraud task forceopens in a new tab led by Vice President JD Vance.
Sheila Clark, CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, is questioning how these alleged instances of fraud have slipped through the cracks.
“How do you put a hospice in a burrito stand in California? How do you put a hospice in a tire store? That all had to be vetted through licensure, certification, and accreditation,” Clark said during a House of Representatives hearing on April 21.
According to City Journalopens in a new tab, a public policy magazine published by the Manhattan Institute, California has lost “at least $180 billion to fraud.”
While this amount of money is not attributed solely to hospice fraud, Californians such as Sheila Clark blame this level of alleged fraud on lack of oversight.
“California is the clearest current case study of what happens when oversight weaknesses are exploited at scale,” Clark said.
In an interview with The Daily Signal, California Policy Center Vice President of Government Affairs Lance Christensen said City Journal’s reports of fraud are “probably underestimated.”
“It’s probably higher than that. But it’s hard to nail down because nobody goes through to actually validate most applications,” he said.
Maybe they kill 2 birds with one stone. You eat their food and then become deathly ill. They get you as a customer twice in one fell swoop.