Somewhere in America right now, a grandparent is listed on a hospice roster they never signed up for. A Medicare account is being billed for services never rendered. A “home health agency” operating out of a strip mall mailbox is collecting your money for patients who don’t exist. Washington knew about this kind of grift for years. Washington shrugged.

That era of indifference is colliding with reality. For decades, scammers have gamed Medicare and Medicaid with stunning brazenness — enrolling seniors in hospice care without their knowledge, flipping licenses between shell companies, running multiple phantom agencies out of a single address. All while billing the American taxpayer for every fabricated minute of “care.” The theft is industrial in scale. And the people paying the price are the elderly Americans these programs were designed to serve.

From The Post Millennial:

“We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them,” a spokesperson for VP Vance told The Post Millennial in a statement.

“To all fraudsters: good luck trying to hide from the Vice President’s task force. They are reviewing and pursuing every possible lead. These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase,” a White House official told TPM.

Those aren’t idle words. Vice President JD Vance’s federal anti-fraud task force just yanked the licenses of 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies in Los Angeles. The estimated swindle? Over $600 million. Since the beginning of April alone, suspensions have surged roughly 539 percent. That number doesn’t reflect the task force being overzealous. It reflects how deeply the racket had metastasized while nobody was watching.

The task force, stood up in March, marshals ten federal agencies — Justice, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Labor, and more. This is not a ribbon-cutting photo op. It’s a coordinated federal dragnet. And it should have happened a decade ago.

Phantom hospices and patients who never consented

The details of the schemes are stomach-turning. Some suspended providers enrolled patients in hospice programs that the patients knew nothing about. Others ran a con called “license flipping” — shuttling patients between hospice organizations in exchange for cash, treating elderly human beings like inventory. Investigators found multiple hospices operating out of identical addresses, with the same individuals holding management roles at several of them simultaneously. Kickbacks greased every handoff.

Even the legitimate hospice industry is cheering. Sheila Clark, CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, put it plainly: “Every dollar stolen from hospice and skilled home health is a dollar of care not provided to Medicare patients who need it.” She described scammers who “deceptively and illegally” enrolled seniors in programs that they never consented to.”

When the industry that stands to lose business from a crackdown is thanking the government for cracking down, you know the problem was catastrophic.

California’s answer? Protect the grifters.

Here’s where the story takes a genuinely enraging turn. While the federal government was exposing hundreds of millions in fraud, California’s Democratic leadership was busy drafting legislation to make fraud harder to uncover.

Assemblywoman Mia Bonta introduced AB 2624, a bill imposing steep penalties and potential criminal charges on anyone who discloses information about fraud tied to migrant service providers. Mia Bonta, it’s worth noting, is married to California Attorney General Rob Bonta. Convenient arrangement. Critics have dubbed the legislation the “Stop Nick Shirley Act,” after the YouTuber whose investigative reporting in Minneapolis blew the lid off Somali Medicaid fraud and sparked journalist investigations nationwide — including in California.

The bill sailed through an Assembly committee 11-2. Eleven California lawmakers looked at a $600 million fraud epidemic and decided the real threat was the people exposing it. Remarkable priorities.

Every last dollar, every last city

Credit where it’s earned. Vice President Vance has accomplished more on health care fraud in a few weeks than the previous administration managed in four years. But honesty demands a follow-up question: if one metro area produced $600 million in suspected hospice fraud, what’s lurking in Houston? Chicago? Miami?

The answer is almost certainly worse. Much worse.

This task force cannot remain a Los Angeles story. It needs to expand into every major city in the country and chase every lead to its conclusion. No political considerations. No squeamishness. Every stolen dollar tracked and reclaimed.

Americans who spent their working lives paying into Medicare — trusting that the system would be there when they needed it — deserve nothing less. Vance has drawn the battle lines. Now press the advantage. Every city. Every state. Every dime.

Key Takeaways

• Vance’s task force suspended 447 LA hospices over an estimated $600 million in Medicare fraud.
• Scammers enrolled seniors in hospice without consent, stealing benefits meant for genuine patients.
• California Democrats introduced a bill to criminalize exposing fraud tied to migrant services.
• This crackdown must expand nationwide — every city, every state, every stolen dollar recovered.

Sources: The Post Millennial, Hospice News