The U.S. Congress is being stunned by unnerving revelations about the extent of hospice fraud in California, with alarming testimony indicating phony hospice centers purportedly located in a burrito stand as well as a tire shop.
Sheila Clark, president and CEO of the California Hospice and Palliative Care Association, told lawmakers Tuesday: “How do you put a hospice in a burrito stand in California? How do you put a hospice in a tire store in California? That all had to be vetted through licensure and certification and accreditation.”
“You’d be amazed at how many hospices – the door you can walk up to in California and there is nobody there. There is five months worth of mail that you can see stacked up from CMS and nobody’s there. And that passed a survey. How did that happen?”
The House Ways and Means Committee was so struck by Clark’s disclosure, it shared her testimony on social media, noting: “You heard that right. In Gavin Newsom’s California, a burrito stand masquerading as a hospice care facility was getting accredited and receiving taxpayer dollars.”
While Clark did not name any specific burrito stand, Politics on X explained: “This example illustrates broader federal and state probes into California hospice fraud involving overbilling Medicare, shell companies, identity theft, and improper enrollments, with one recent scheme alone allegedly defrauding Medi-Cal of $267 million.”
Hellbound and Down 