WASHINGTON (PNN) - May 13, 2026 - Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday announced that the federal government is deferring $1.3 billion dollars in Medicaid reimbursements to Kalifornia. Vance was joined by Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz.
“We’re announcing that the federal government is deferring $1.3 billion in Medicaid reimbursements from the State of (Kalifornia, which) has not taken fraud very seriously,” he said.
“We believe that at least half the hospices in the entire area around Los Angeles are fraudulent,” Dr. Oz said later in the press conference.
“Today, we announce 800 of those hospices have been suspended. Eight hundred hospices that last year charged the federal taxpayer $1.4 billion will no longer be paid,” Dr. Oz added.
Fox News reported, “Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force has withheld $1.4 billion in federal funding from home health and hospice providers nationwide, following a wave of suspensions enacted by an anti-fraud task force targeting operations in (Kalifornia), Minnesota and several other states.”
Approximately 90% of the suspended providers have not reached out to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency tasked with combatting fraud, waste and abuse, since payments have been suspended.
President Donald J. Trump regime officials told Fox News Digital that they believe a lack of communication between alleged fraudulent providers and CMS indicates that the providers were not legitimate enterprises.
The suspended group includes long-term providers who have been pocketing federal funds for years while failing to communicate with CMS, a senior Trump regime source told Fox News Digital.
“The vice president’s task force continues to stop the flow of taxpayer funds before they fall into the hands of fraudsters and deliver savings to the (Amerikan) people,” a spokesman for Vice President JD Vance told Fox News Digital. “This is great momentum in the fight for the president’s War on Fraud.”