Vance’s Medicare crackdown just froze billions in hospice care, but the scheme it uncovered is far darker than a simple billing scam
Draconian measures.
Vice President J.D. Vance’s Medicare fraud task force just froze billions in hospice care payments, slamming the brakes on new providers nationwide for the next six months. The move, announced on May 13, 2026, is the sharpest crackdown yet on what officials are calling a crisis of exploitation — one that goes far beyond simple billing scams and has left vulnerable patients caught in the crossfire.
According to Newsweek, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) imposed a six-month moratorium on enrolling new hospice and home health providers, a decision framed as a necessary pause to stop fraudsters from gaming the system. Current providers can keep operating, but the freeze is already drawing concern from industry groups worried about access to care, especially in areas where legitimate services are already stretched thin.
CMS says the move will let them dig deeper into high-risk providers instead of chasing fraud after the fact, a shift officials say is long overdue. CMS and Vance’s task force deferred $1.3 billion in reimbursements to California alone, citing the state’s failure to rein in Medicaid fraud.
The numbers behind the crackdown are staggering
In Los Angeles County, the number of home health providers flagged as suspicious jumped 40% between 2019 and 2023. Across California, hospice providers surged 126% in the same period, while Nevada saw a 151% spike. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz didn’t mince words: “A third of all hospices in the entire country are in Los Angeles. Ask yourself, how is that possible? It’s not. There are not that many people dying in Los Angeles.”
The problem isn’t just money; it’s also patients. Officials say some providers have enrolled people in hospice care without their knowledge or consent, even when they weren’t terminally ill. Others have been denied Medicare coverage for treatments they needed because they were wrongly classified as hospice patients.
Vance described cases where patients were prescribed unnecessary medications or even had drugs administered without their consent, all to inflate billing. “You have people who’ve been prescribed medications that they don’t even need,” he said. “Sometimes they’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration of medications.”
The schemes uncovered so far read like something out of a crime thriller
In Massachusetts, an operator was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $100 million in restitution after billing Medicare for services that were never provided or medically necessary. In Illinois and Indiana, investigators dismantled a decade-long kickback network where marketers were paid to refer patients regardless of need, while companies billed for repeated admissions and even for visits that never happened.
In Ohio and Texas, operators were caught billing for care provided to dead patients, forging physician signatures, and inflating services. Hospice fraud has become particularly insidious. In one Texas case, prosecutors uncovered a $150 million scheme where doctors were allegedly paid to falsely certify patients as terminal, with some told they had only months to live despite having non-terminal conditions.
Authorities have also found “ghost” hospice networks — shell companies with fake owners billing for services that were never provided. Some operators shut down and reopen under new identities after collecting payments, a tactic that’s made fraud harder to track and easier to repeat.
The crackdown isn’t just targeting providers
Vance warned that states failing to take fraud seriously could lose federal Medicaid funding. According to the NY Post, letters are going out to all 50 states, threatening to cut off money for state-level Medicare fraud control units if they don’t step up prosecutions. Vance singled out New York and Hawaii as potential next targets, pointing out that New York, home to a $100 billion Medicaid program, had only nine fraud indictments in the past year.
Indiana, with a third of New York’s population, had more than four times as many. “Does anybody here seriously think that the good people of Indiana are 12 times more likely to commit fraud than the people of New York? No, of course not,” Vance said. “What is happening is that the people in the leadership in New York are just not taking the fraud issue seriously.”
The moratorium has drawn mixed reactions. The National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation (NPHI), which represents nonprofit hospice providers, praised the move. “For too long, fraudulent actors have exploited regulatory gaps to infiltrate hospice care, undermine public trust, and take advantage of vulnerable Americans at one of the most difficult moments in their lives,” said NPHI CEO Tom Koutsoumpas.
The freeze could have unintended consequences
With no new providers allowed to enroll for six months, patients in underserved areas might find it harder to access care. CMS says there are still about 11,500 home health providers and 7,000 hospices available through Medicaid, but industry groups warn that the pause could strain an already fragile system.
The task force has already blocked payments to 773 hospices and 23 home health agencies in Los Angeles County alone, and officials say they’re bracing for fraudsters to try relocating to other states. Earlier this year, CMS withheld $259.5 million in reimbursements for Minnesota programs identified as high-risk, including autism care and non-emergency medical transports.
Vance framed the effort as nonpartisan, insisting that fraud hurts everyone. “Red state or blue state, we’re going to go after it,” he said. “We are not going to have a generous country if Americans think that they’re paying their taxes not to needy people, but to fraudsters. That’s fundamentally what we’re trying to fix, rebuilding America’s trust.”
(Featured image: Gage Skidmore)
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