Four hundred. Four HUNDRED. In one state. In one sweep. Vice President JD Vance’s brand new anti-fraud task force just suspended more than 400 California hospice businesses at the same time for allegedly milking Medicare like it was an ATM with no daily withdrawal limit.
Sit with that number for a second, because it tells you everything you need to know about how corrupt this racket had become. You don’t end up with FOUR HUNDRED fake hospices in a single state by accident. That’s not a few bad apples. That’s an entire industry built on ghost care.
Here’s the scam, for anybody who hasn’t had the pleasure of reading about this disaster: a “hospice” is supposed to be an end-of-life care service for people who are dying. Medicare pays out generously for hospice care because, you know, dying. It’s supposed to be compassionate. It’s supposed to be final. What it’s NOT supposed to be is a thing you can sign up for while you’re playing pickleball, doing Zumba, and planning your grandson’s bar mitzvah.
But for YEARS, that’s exactly what was happening in California. Patients were getting “enrolled” in hospice without knowing they were enrolled in hospice. Some of them weren’t even sick. The fake hospice operators would sign them up, bill Medicare thousands of dollars a month for supposedly end-of-life care, and nobody would actually show up to the house to do anything. The “patient” kept living their life. The “hospice” kept cashing the checks. The U.S. Treasury kept paying. Everybody wins! Except, you know, taxpayers. And actual dying people who needed actual care.
(There are documented cases of people finding out they were on hospice because their regular doctor couldn’t refill their prescriptions anymore — Medicare had quietly flagged them as terminal. Imagine finding out a stranger enrolled you in hospice. Welcome to California.)
This scam has been a bipartisan open secret inside the Beltway for more than a decade. Everybody knew. The inspector general knew. Medicare’s own auditors knew. Congressional staffers talked about it at happy hour. Trade publications wrote about it. And yet the fake hospices kept multiplying like mold in a gym bag because nobody in Washington had the stomach to actually do anything about it.
Turns out, all we needed was a Vice President who didn’t grow up in the club.
JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force — which, let’s be honest, still sounds like a Netflix procedural nobody ordered — just walked into California, pointed at the map, and wiped out 400 fake hospices in a single administrative sweep. That’s not a slap on the wrist. That’s a full-blown suspension. Licenses gone. Billing privileges gone. Doors closed.
And this was the FIRST major action. The opening move. The Vance team is essentially saying, “Hi, California, nice to meet you. Please enjoy this multi-billion-dollar anti-fraud punch directly to the face. We’ll be back tomorrow.”
(Somewhere in Newport Beach, a guy named Kevin is watching his fourth Rolex get repossessed in real time.)
Here’s the part that makes you want to drive a flag into your front yard and salute it: this is what “drain the swamp” actually looks like when a competent administration is the one holding the bucket. For eight years, we had politicians of both parties tell us the system was “too big” or “too complicated” or “too integrated” to reform. Entire graduate programs have been written about why fraud is basically impossible to stop at the federal level. Everybody threw up their hands and collected their pensions.
Meanwhile, a task force staffed by people who have been in their jobs for a few months just… did it. They looked at the data, they cross-referenced the billing, they flagged the fakes, and they shut them down. Turns out the swamp isn’t bottomless. It just needed somebody with a shovel instead of another oversight committee.
Now, let’s be honest about California’s particular role here. The fake hospice industry didn’t blow up in Missouri or Tennessee. It blew up in California, because the state’s regulators spent the last 15 years focused on things like requiring hotel housekeepers to complete “inclusivity training” and making sure the emotional support peacocks got on the plane. Medicare fraud to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars? Eh, who’s got time to look into that?
(We have a theory that if these 400 hospices had been selling plastic straws instead of stealing Medicare money, Gavin Newsom would have personally led a SWAT team through the doors on day one.)
The pushback from the usual suspects is going to be something to behold. Expect within 48 hours a “health equity expert” to appear on MSNBC explaining that cracking down on hospice fraud is actually racist because it “disproportionately impacts communities of color.” Expect a lawsuit from an ACLU chapter claiming operators of fake hospices have a First Amendment right to be subsidized by the federal government. Expect three different Politico articles titled “Is JD Vance’s Fraud Task Force Going Too Far?”
Don’t fall for any of it. Four hundred fake hospices means four hundred real-world places where grifters were stealing money from the Medicare Trust Fund — the same trust fund our parents and grandparents paid into their entire working lives. That’s not a policy dispute. That’s theft.
Here’s a prediction: this is the best kind of headline we’re going to see over and over again for the next three years. Vance’s task force is going to keep rolling state by state, hospital system by hospital system, Medicare Advantage plan by Medicare Advantage plan, and the number of “suspended” entities is going to make 400 look like a warm-up number.
Light the bucket on fire. We’re finally draining the swamp for real.
