Billions of dollars in alleged fraudulent healthcare spending is being investigated in California, specifically probing foreign nationals operating illegal hospice facilities — officials announced Friday in a bombshell press conference.
“We have witnessed a sevenfold increase in hospice in LA County, sevenfold. That doesn’t happen naturally,” Dr Mehmet Oz, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services told The Post during at the press conference.
“There is not seven times more deaths in LA County than there were five years ago. These are fraudsters, and these do tend to be foreign influences, either Russian and Armenian gangs, mafia, that are leading a lot of these efforts.”
Fraudsters who run these facilities are working with about “100 bad doctors,” who convince a patient they’re dying to enroll them in hospice care, Dr Oz said, adding about 100,000 people have handed over their Medicare numbers.
“We are major focused on this issue, and I think our suspicion, our belief, is that the fraud in California will magnify whatever’s happening in Minnesota,” United States Attorney Bill Essayli said. “What’s happening in Minnesota pales in comparison to the level of fraud that we believe is occurring in California.”
Dr Oz said the Trump administration is also cracking down on taxpayer money being used to treat illegal immigrants for elective procedures.
“We’ve already identified about $1.3 billion of federal dollars spent to take care of illegal immigrants,” Dr Oz said. “The state is giving that money back.”
Hundreds of billions of dollars flow through California’s healthcare system, according to Essayli, who said $10 billion is for “illegal immigrant health care.”
“No federal dollars is supposed to be used for that,” said Essayli, who back in April launched a task force investigating corruption in the state, specifically focused on homelessness.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed back on the on the widespread fraud claims, writing on X that the he has “blocked over $125 BILLION in fraud, arrested criminal parasites leaching off of taxpayers, and protected taxpayers from the exact kind of scam artist Trump celebrates, excuses, and pardons.”
Dr Oz said he intends to work with Newsom and state leadership to create a “corrective action plan,” but warned, there are steps that could be taken at the federal level if there is no cooperation.
“They are aggressive steps, but this kind of a crisis requires aggressive treatment,” Dr Oz told reporters.
Earlier this week, the Department of Health and Human Services cut off $10 billion in social services and child care funding to a handful of Democrat-led states, including California, over fears the benefits were fraudulently funneled to non-citizens.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta, along with four other states — Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York — filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration over its decision to freeze the funds, calling it “unconstitutional and unlawful.”
“With each passing day, his ‘America First’ rhetoric is exposed as nothing more than smoke and mirrors,” Bonta said in a statement on Thursday,
The fraud allegations came to light after the Trump administration announced recently it will appoint a new attorney general position to focus on tackling fraud.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.