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California is finally being forced to reckon with a brazen hospice-fraud racket that has bilked Medicare and Medi‑Cal of millions and left vulnerable patients and taxpayers worse off. Federal and state authorities have brought multiple indictments, guilty pleas, and sentences tied to sham hospice companies and money‑laundering schemes across the state.
This explosion of fraud did not spring up overnight, and yet Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration wants the public to believe it has everything under control — even pointing fingers at critics for speaking plainly about the crisis. Newsom has touted actions like a 2021 ban on new hospice licenses while also launching political attacks when federal officials and commentators call out the scale of the problem.
Reality is harsher than the press releases: independent audits and state reviews have repeatedly flagged lax oversight and regulatory gaps that made California a ripe target for predatory operators. Investigative reporting and auditor findings show this is an industry plagued by systemic weaknesses that elected Democrats in Sacramento failed to fix in time.
The numbers are damning: recent federal cases detail schemes that stole millions — with prosecutions tied to $17 million, $16 million, $9 million and other multimillion‑dollar frauds — money that should have gone to care, not to scammers. Every dollar siphoned by these criminal enterprises is a dollar ripped from sick patients and hardworking Americans who pay into Medicare.
Rather than playing politics, Sacramento should stop sanitizing the problem and start answering for how this happened on its watch. When Governor Newsom files civil‑rights complaints and lashes out at federal officials and outside critics, it looks less like governance and more like cover‑up and deflection. The public deserves straight answers about oversight failures, not more spin.
Conservatives rightly demand accountability: criminal prosecutions where appropriate, wholesale reform of hospice certification and auditing, and transparency so families can trust the institutions supposed to care for their loved ones. If state government won’t act decisively, federal prosecutors and Congress must step in to protect patients and taxpayers from organized abuse.
This fight isn’t over — justice officials continue to pursue additional defendants and dismantle networks profiting off the sick. Californians should remember these failures at the ballot box and insist their leaders stop the political theater and start protecting the most vulnerable.
