Vance Task Force Withholds $1.4 Billion from Home Health, Hospice Providers in Fraud Crackdown

Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force has withheld $1.4 billion in federal funding from home health and hospice providers across the country. The move follows suspensions targeting operations in California, Minnesota and several other states.

About 90% of the suspended providers have not contacted the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the agency responsible for fighting fraud, waste and abuse, since payments stopped.

Trump administration officials told Fox News Digital that the lack of communication from the alleged fraudulent providers to CMS shows they were not legitimate businesses.

The suspended providers include long-term operations that collected federal funds for years without communicating with CMS, a senior Trump administration source told Fox News Digital.

"The Vice President’s task force continues to stop the flow of taxpayer funds before they fall into the hands of fraudsters and deliver savings to the American people," a spokesperson for Vice President JD Vance told Fox News Digital. "This is great momentum in the fight for the President’s War on Fraud."

Los Angeles County faces increased scrutiny after reports exposed widespread hospice fraud.

President Donald Trump has made rooting out systemic fraud a key part of his administration's domestic policy. On Monday, CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz criticized California officials over the state's hospice problems. He said the fraud is "stealing your lives" and described a complex network of international corruption.

"We’ve got Russian government involvement, we believe, in Los Angeles. We’ve got the Chinese government involved in a big fraud ring in New York," Oz told guest host Kayleigh McEnany on "Jesse Watters Primetime." "And, of course, the Cuban connection... pointed out to me by former Miami Mayor Francis Suarez. We’ve got twice as many durable medical equipment suppliers—selling wheelchairs and canes—as there are McDonald’s in South Florida. The owners often flee back to Cuba with the money the moment we move in on them."

Last month, Fox News Digital reported the suspension of 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies suspected of fraud in Los Angeles alone. The total theft there is estimated at more than $600 million.

Days later, the U.S. Small Business Administration referred 562,000 suspected fraudulent loans totaling over $22.2 billion to the U.S. Department of the Treasury for collection. The loans came mainly from the Paycheck Protection Program and the COVID Economic Injury Disaster Loan program.

The SBA said these files were flagged for suspected fraud during the Biden administration but were never forwarded to Treasury for recovery.

"The task force has made clear that the Biden Administration’s policy of giving direct cash payments to fraudsters is over," a senior White House official told Fox News Digital.

In April, Sheila Clark, president and CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, warned lawmakers about thriving industry fraud in the state. She questioned how so-called "ghost" providers avoided regulators for so long.

"You'd be amazed at how many hospices... you can walk up to the door in California and there is nobody there. You can see five months' worth of mail stacked up," Clark told the House Ways and Means Committee on April 22. "And yet, they passed a survey. How did that happen?"

"How do you put a hospice in a burrito stand? How do you put a hospice in a retail store?" she added. "That all had to be vetted through licensure, certification and accreditation."

California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently announced the arrest of five people tied to an alleged multi-million-dollar hospice scheme. The operation reportedly brought in $267 million through fraudulent billing to Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program.