California built a welfare state so reckless that fraudsters turned dying patients into a cash machine.
Now JD Vance is making them pay for it.
He just froze over $600 million in payments to nearly 500 hospice businesses – and the White House says the number will keep going up.
The Scheme That Turned Death Into a Business
Los Angeles County has more hospice providers than 36 entire states combined.
That number tells you everything you need to know.
From 2010 to 2022, the number of hospice businesses in LA County exploded by 1,500 percent – six times the national growth rate.
Those aren't new patients getting care.
That's organized crime learning how to print money.
The playbook is straightforward: set up a fake hospice, declare healthy seniors terminally ill, then bill Medicare at $29,000 per patient – more than double the national average of $13,200.
To keep the patients coming, operators paid cash kickbacks of $300 a month to recruits who agreed to pose as dying.
One business in Artesia had a survival rate of more than 97 percent.
When nearly all of your "dying" patients walk out alive, you're not running a hospice.
You're running a scam.
In one San Fernando Valley office plaza, investigators found 89 separate hospice companies registered at the same address.
That's not healthcare.
That's a fraud factory.
Dr. Mehmet Oz has claimed that LA County alone represents $3.5 billion in Medicare hospice and home health billing – roughly 18 percent of all such billing in the entire country, from a county that holds just 2.5 percent of America's seniors.
https://twitter.com/EricLDaugh/status/2026788266972741830?s=20
What Newsom Let Go On for Years
This was not a secret.
The California State Auditor flagged the 1,500 percent provider surge back in 2022.
State prosecutors called hospice fraud an "epidemic" the same year.
Gavin Newsom signed a law pausing new hospice licenses in 2021 – then watched the fraud continue, extended the pause, and declared victory.
While fraud consumed hundreds of millions, Newsom's administration spent its energy on something else: filing a civil rights complaint against Dr. Oz for publicly naming who was running the schemes.
Now California Democrats are advancing AB 2624 – a bill that would impose steep fines and potential criminal charges on journalists who expose fraud connected to immigrant-run businesses.
Republican Assemblyman Carl DeMaio dubbed it the "Stop Nick Shirley Act" – named after the journalist who exposed the Minnesota fraud and is now turning his attention to California.
Democrats in Sacramento aren't trying to stop the fraud.
They're trying to stop the people exposing it.
What Thirty Days of Vance Actually Accomplished
The Task Force to Eliminate Fraud launched on March 16.
Nine days later, 70 LA hospice businesses had payments frozen.
As of Wednesday, that number had reached 447 hospices and 23 home health agencies – a 539 percent increase in under a month, with total suspended payments exceeding $600 million.
Federal prosecutors have arrested eight people connected to the schemes, charged 15 more under "Operation Never Say Die," and pulled Medicare enrollment for a single LA doctor tied to $71 million in fraudulent billing.
https://twitter.com/AndrewKolvet/status/2044529555990565258?s=20
First Assistant US Attorney Bill Essayli – a Trump appointee – called California the "kingdom of fraud" in front of cameras.
He was being generous.
This is the same pattern that played out in Minnesota, where Tim Walz allowed fraudsters to steal hundreds of millions from programs meant to feed children.
It echoes the nationwide June 2025 health care fraud takedown – the largest in American history – which charged 324 defendants across 50 federal districts for $14.6 billion in alleged losses.
California isn't an outlier.
It's what every Democrat-run government looks like when federal oversight disappears – money flows in, accountability vanishes, and the people connected to their political coalition take what they want.
The White House made clear the task force is not finished.
"To all fraudsters: good luck trying to hide from the Vice President's task force," a White House official told Fox News.
"These suspension numbers, and the dollar values saved, are only going to increase."
Every dollar Vance recovers is a dollar that was supposed to go to an actual dying American – someone who paid into Medicare their entire working life and found a disconnected phone number when they finally needed care.
That is what California Democrats protected.
That is what JD Vance is ending.
Sources:
- Olivia Rondeau, "Vance's Task Force Suspends Over 400 California Hospice Businesses for Alleged Fraud," Breitbart News, April 15, 2026.
- "Vance Anti-Fraud Task Force Suspends 447 Hospices in Los Angeles Over More Than $600M in Suspected Fraud," Fox News, April 15, 2026.
- "Oversight Committee Launches Investigation Into Rampant Taxpayer Fraud in California Hospice Programs," House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, March 2026.
- "Four California Residents Sentenced to Prison in Connection with $16M Hospice Fraud and Money Laundering Scheme," Department of Justice, November 2025.
- William La Jeunesse, "Los Angeles Hospice Fraud Reaches Billions as Medicare Providers Scam Federal System With Fake Companies," Fox News, January 30, 2026.
- "LA County Cracks Down on $14.6B Hospice Fraud Ring," Santa Monica Daily Press, April 2026.
- "Inside the $60M Takedown: 8 Southern California Cases Under Medicare Fraud Investigation," Fox 11 Los Angeles, April 2026.
