California Hospice Fraud Investigation Report

Fox News alert. This is Saturday in America.

I'm Kayleigh McEnany.

We have unearthed an explosive report.

The 2022 document that I am holding is an 87-page

report from the then acting state auditor in California,

addressed directly to the governor of California,

warning in no uncertain terms that the state's weak

oversight of hospice agencies has created opportunities for

large-scale abuse and fraud. That last part's a direct quote.

Now, look at this screenshot of the very first

page of the audit addressed to

Governor Gavin Newsom. The subtitle warns of the extensive

fraud plaguing California today.

It cites fraud indicators found particularly in Los Angeles County,

a rapid increase in the number of hospice agencies with no clear

correlation to increased need. In fact, listen to this, the aged

population increased 40% in California between 2010 and

2021, while the hospice agencies increased a,

an astonishing

1,589%. Another

indicator was the excessive geographic clustering of hospices with

sometimes dozens of separately licensed agencies located in the same

building, and also abnormally high rates of

still-living

patients discharged from hospice care despite hospice

typically offering care for people expected to live six months or

less. And look at this. You won't believe it.

They even gave Newsom a map. Quote,

"210 active hospice agencies located

within one mile of each other on Van Nuys in Los Angeles

County." Now, did Gavin Newsom go to these locations?

Did his government check out these buildings?

This document reads like points from a Nick Shirley

video. But no, these were the fraud warnings listed

by the acting state auditor four years ago, leading him to

conclude, quote, "that a network or networks of individual

perpetrators in Los Angeles County are engaging in a large and organized

effort to defraud the Medicare and Medi-Cal hospice

programs." It appears that California state auditor discovered

four

years ago what RFK Jr. outlined on Capitol Hill this week.

The hospices in Los Angeles,

we've shut down 500 of them. We have not gotten one call from a

congressperson

or one call from a patient. Why? Because those hospices did not

exist.

Right.

They were signing up patients. They were getting patient IDs,

signing them up, and charging us $6,000 a month for that

patient.

How did we detect them all? Because the patients never died.

But it gets worse. The auditor notes that the California Department of Public

Health had failed to issue regulations for its hospice licensing

process, despite having had the authority to do so

since

1991. And then listen closely to this.

Quote, "We reviewed cases in which public health became

aware of possible fraud during the licensing process,

and instead of denying the licenses," this is Gavin Newsom's

health agency, "it granted licenses to these

hospice agencies."

Why? Now, the failure of Gavin Newsom's government

paved the way for

this.

You'd be amazed at how many hospices you, the door you can walk up

to in California, and there is nobody there.

There is

five months worth of mail that you can see stacked up from

CMS, and nobody's there.

We, and, and that p- that passed a survey.

How did that happen? How do you put a hospice in a burrito

stand

in California? How do you put a hospice in a tire

store in California? That all had to be vetted

through licensure and through certification an- and

accreditation.

But Gavin Newsom told us he was on the case. Do you remember this?

Newsom told us that he was, quote, "leading the charge against

large-scale identity theft and hospice fraud." Well, apparently not.

His auditor wrote this: "Since 2015, the California Department of

Public Health has never suspended a hospice license and has revoked a

hospice license only once." That's what he wrote in 2021.

Now, the auditor went on to recommend that Newsom convene a task force to

investigate and prosecute fraud, require departments to establish working

groups for risk assessment, among other recommendations.

Now, Gavin Newsom did sign legislation in 2021

which put a moratorium on new hospice licenses.

That plan is still in place. It's set to expire.

Clearly, however, his efforts were insufficient.

That was evidenced by Dr. Oz's recent raids on hospice facilities

in the state.