U.S. News
Kennedy Says Los Angeles Hospice Fraud May Reach Billions
Clear Facts
- HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. estimated Los Angeles hospice fraud could total about $5 billion.
- The Trump administration has suspended funding for nearly 450 suspected facilities and shut down 500 others.
- Investigators found scams using fake locations, multiple licenses at one address, and bribes to enroll healthy people.
Representative Beth Van Duyne pointed to a Van Nuys address tied to more than 100 hospice licenses. Officials said some operators used fake sites and recruited healthy people with cash and gifts to bill the government.
Representative Van Duyne questioned how so many licenses could be tied to a single office building without intervention. Kennedy said the schemes were driven by organized criminal networks.
“It would obtain patient identification or they would pay people, they were going and giving people in poor neighborhoods flat screen televisions, $600 and then they would enlist them and enroll them in the hospice and we were paying them $6000.”
“Typically, the stay in a hospice is about 18 days, these people stayed forever. Nothing ever happened because they weren’t actually there, they were just invented.”
Vice President J.D. Vance leads an anti-fraud task force aimed at reducing waste and abuse in federal health programs. Similar investigations are also underway in Minnesota, Washington, and Ohio.
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