Overview
- The House Oversight Committee, which sent a letter Monday, requested Newsom’s records from Jan. 1, 2019 to the present and set an April 6 deadline for documents on how California policed federally funded hospice care.
- Lawmakers cited reporting that flagged systemic warning signs in Los Angeles County, including more than 700 hospices with multiple red flags, typical Medicare charges of about $29,000 per patient versus $13,200 nationally, and a CMS estimate of $3.5 billion in suspected fraud concentrated in the county.
- Newsom’s office says the state has been cracking down through a moratorium on new hospice licenses since 2021, a multi‑agency task force, more than 280 license revocations in two years, roughly 300 providers now under review, and 284 arrests tied to hospice cases.
- The investigation escalated this week as Chairman James Comer said he wants Newsom to testify and as CMS leadership publicly vowed tougher action against suspect providers in what they called an epidemic of fraud.
- Hospice care relies on trust‑based certification and lighter documentation, which auditors say enabled schemes such as shared addresses, very low patient counts, excessive billing, and enrolling people in hospice without their knowledge, raising risks for patients and taxpayers as federal and state actions advance.