adminA damning CBS News analysis has exposed Los Angeles County as ground zero for hospice abuse, finding that more than 700 of roughly 1,800 hospices trigger multiple state-defined red flags — a grotesque pattern of bait-and-switch enrollment, identity theft, and suspicious billing that steals from seniors and American taxpayers. This isn’t a few bad actors; it’s an industry-sized problem that corrodes trust in health care and drains Medicare at a time when fiscal sanity is already under siege. The scale of these red flags should make every elected official sit up and demand immediate action.
Georgia Rep. Buddy Carter spoke for millions of Americans when he blasted hospice fraud at a House hearing, saying bluntly that “there’s a special place in hell for people who commit fraud with Hospice,” because these schemes prey on the most vulnerable among us. His anger is righteous and necessary — Washington and state capitols must stop treating fraud as a bureaucratic nuisance and start treating it like the violent theft it is. Conservatives who value accountability should back any serious effort to strip the incentives that let sham hospices flourish.
Federal prosecutors have begun to follow the money, with recent DOJ cases sending several operators to prison for multimillion-dollar hospice fraud and money laundering schemes, proving that criminal penalties can and must be used to deter this behavior. Those convictions are good, but they only scratch the surface; prosecutors need more resources and a surgical focus on the networks and middlemen who make these scams possible. If you rob seniors and corrupt Medicare, you should be locked up and your proceeds seized — no exceptions.
California officials trumpet revocations and investigations — the Newsom administration points to hundreds of license revocations and ongoing probes — and yes, state enforcement is part of the solution. But the federal government has been forced to step in too, including a recent CMS announcement imposing a nationwide temporary moratorium on new hospice enrollments because the problem is more than local mismanagement; it’s a national integrity crisis that threatens the whole program. States must do better at vetting providers, and when they fail, Washington should use every tool to protect seniors and taxpayers.
The fixes are blunt and common-sense: tighten enrollment rules, require forensic audits of suspicious clusters, mandate criminal-background checks for owners, insist on verifiable patient elections for hospice care, and expand data-sharing between states and federal investigators so copycat schemes are snuffed out before they metastasize. Conservatives should champion surgical regulatory reforms that preserve legitimate, compassionate hospice care while eliminating the profit motive that turns end-of-life services into a cash cow for crooks. CMS’s moratorium shows regulators are finally willing to take hard steps — now Congress should move to make those steps permanent and targeted.
This is not a partisan lament; it’s a patriotic call to defend seniors, protect Medicare, and punish those who exploit both. Lawmakers like Rep. Carter who speak plainly and act decisively deserve the support of every taxpayer-watching American. If Washington truly cares about stewardship of the public trust, it will back enforcement, empower prosecutors, and pass reforms that choke off the easy money these hospice fraudsters have relied on for far too long.
