As Somali Fraud is continually revealed all over the states, and in particular Minnesota, investigators found massive hospice fraud in California. HOSPICE. These are vulnerable people at the end of their lives, and those who need the service may not be able to obtain it because the fraud has sucked out the available funds.
– 18% of THE WHOLE COUNTRY’S home health care billing is coming out of Los Angeles County – One doctor billed the government $120 million in a single year claiming to oversee 1,900 patients – With almost 2,000 hospice agencies, Los Angeles County has more than 36 states combined and 30X MORE than the whole state of Florida and New York
A cluster of 287 hospice providers, in a two-mile radius, some in strip malls, unmarked buildings, even a wrecking yard and vacant lot. All of it is just paperwork.
“Hospice is crazy here,” says Dr. Mehmet Oz, head of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “You’ve got hospice that’s grown seven-fold in the last five years. They represent about three and a half billion dollars of fraud, we believe, just in LA County.”
Backing him up, California Attorney General Rob Bonta, who said last year, “Hospice fraud has become an epidemic in California, specifically in the greater Los Angeles area.”
Bonta says fraudulent providers submit false claims for unnecessary services and recruiters get kickbacks for signing up seniors, whether they’re sick or not. Hospices also enroll patients who don’t even know they’ve been scammed until they seek out medical care.
“As a hospice owner, I could sign up everybody in this room for hospice,” an LA hospice owner told us. A whistleblower told us there’s no limit on the number of hospices an individual can own and applicants can live abroad. “It’s all just paperwork. I could fill [an application] out in Kazakhstan if I want, and get a hospice license.”
