Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force has suspended hundreds of hospices suspected of fraudulently billing for end-of-life services in Los Angeles, an area identified by both state and federal authorities as a hospice fraud hot spot.
The newly appointed White House task force, headed by Vance, issued suspensions this week against 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies operating out of Los Angeles, pausing payments to providers believed to have defrauded federal healthcare programs out of more than $600 million.
“Where there is fraud, the task force will find it,” a spokesperson for Vance told Fox News Digital. “We will not stop until every hard-earned taxpayer dollar goes toward the honest Americans who deserve them.”
The number of suspensions marks roughly a 539% increase from the 70 suspensions the government ordered at the beginning of April, Fox News Digital reported. At the time, dozens of Los Angeles-based hospice and home health providers had their funding paused within one week after the White House task force flagged their billing activity as high risk for fraud.
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Following the suspensions, the White House warned fraudsters that remedial action will only intensify in the coming weeks as the task force ramps up its investigations.
“To all fraudsters: good luck trying to hide from the Vice President’s task force,” a White House official told Fox News Digital. “[The anti-fraud task force is] reviewing and pursuing every possible lead. These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase.”
The task force is using an artificial intelligence-driven detection system to identify potentially fraudulent Medicaid claims nationwide. Prior to the Trump administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services would have to manually unenroll compromised providers, as opposed to the streamlined A.I. approach that automatically flags irregular billing practices.
In addition to imposing suspensions, Vance’s fraud-fighting task force has the power, by presidential decree, to audit, force repayment from, and terminate the billing privileges of healthcare providers.
Those sanctioned can also lose their eligibility status for claiming Medicare or Medicaid reimbursements, landing themselves on the banned providers list, and be “debarred” from entering contracts with the federal government or receiving grant money.
In early April, the FBI arrested eight people in California, including nurses, a chiropractor, and a psychologist, on suspicion that they stole more than $50 million from the nation’s healthcare system.
Some of the defendants were accused of operating sham palliative care services that used patients without long-term or terminal illnesses as beneficiaries.
The raids were conducted as part of Operation Never Say Die, a targeted takedown of suspicious hospice agencies in the Los Angeles area that claim to serve dying patients.
Republicans have blamed Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and other California Democrats for allowing fraud to proliferate on their watch with lax oversight policies and little internal controls in place to prevent abuse of federal healthcare funds.
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“In 10 weeks, we’re getting close to what Gov. Newsom did in four years,” CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said.
The California crackdown is a continuation of the Trump administration’s broader “war on fraud,” which Vance was tapped to lead earlier this year.