Overview
- Federal officials working through Vice President J.D. Vance’s anti-fraud task force and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services suspended 70 hospice and home-health providers in Los Angeles and paused their funding.
- CMS is deploying an internal artificial intelligence system that flags suspicious claims and can block likely fraudulent ones, and the task force is hiring CMS technologists to roll it out nationwide.
- People involved in the effort say the number of flagged providers will rise as the system scales, and both President Trump and Vance have singled out California and other Democratic-led states as likely hotspots.
- The Los Angeles suspensions follow earlier steps that included withholding about $259.5 million in Minnesota Medicaid payments and a six-month freeze on new Medicare enrollment for some durable medical equipment suppliers.
- The task force was created this month by executive order to coordinate fraud crackdowns across benefit programs, and the latest suspensions were reported by outlets citing sources familiar with the operation.