Vance says $1.3 billion in Medicaid payments to California will be deferred over fraud concerns

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Vice President JD Vance said Wednesday that the Trump administration is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements to California over concerns the state is allowing “fraudsters” to drive up costs to taxpayers, including by pushing unnecessary medications on unsuspecting patients.“There are California taxpayers and American taxpayers who are being defrauded because California isn’t taking its program seriously.But also, you have people who’ve been prescribed medications that they don’t even need,” Vance said.

“Sometimes they’ve had drugs put into their bodies that they don’t need because fraudsters have actually encouraged false prescriptions and false administration and medications.”Vance, standing alongside Dr.Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said the administration is also sending letters to all 50 states informing them that if they do not “effectively and aggressively prosecute Medicaid fraud in their states,” they will see federal funding cut off as well.“We want California to get serious about this fraud,” said Vance, who President Trump named his “fraud czar” last month.Oz called out what he said was widespread fraud in hospice services and similar in-home care programs nationally — and particularly in the Los Angeles region — and announced a six-month moratorium on new Medicare enrollment for hospices and home health agencies.

“A third of all these programs in the entire country are in Los Angeles.Ask yourself, how is that possible? It’s not,” Oz said.

“They’re not that many people dying in Los Angeles.We’re not talking about California, just Los Angeles.”He said he and others in the administration determined that “at least half of the hospices, in the entire area around Los Angeles, are fraudulent,” and had shut down 800 of them that last year had “charged t...