Trump Admin Withholds $1.4B Amid Fraud Crackdown
Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force has suspended roughly $1.4 billion in federal payments to home health and hospice providers across the country as the Trump administration ramps up its crackdown on…
Vice President JD Vance’s anti-fraud task force has suspended roughly $1.4 billion in federal payments to home health and hospice providers across the country as the Trump administration ramps up its crackdown on alleged abuse within Medicare and Medicaid programs.
The effort, led through a partnership with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), has focused heavily on providers operating in California, Minnesota, and several other states where officials say fraud schemes have become deeply embedded in the healthcare system.
According to Trump administration officials, nearly 90% of the providers whose payments were frozen have not contacted CMS since the suspensions were issued. Officials say that silence is raising additional red flags about whether many of the businesses were legitimate healthcare operations at all.
Administration sources told Fox News Digital that some of the providers had been collecting taxpayer-funded reimbursements for years while maintaining little to no communication with federal regulators. Officials described many of the operations as “ghost” providers that appeared to exist largely on paper while continuing to bill the government for services.
“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 American people,” a spokesperson for Vance told Fox News Digital. “This is great momentum in the fight for the President’s War on Fraud.”
President Donald Trump has made government waste and fraud a central issue during his second term, with healthcare billing abuse becoming a major target for federal investigators. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz recently pointed to what he described as organized international fraud networks operating inside the United States healthcare system.
Speaking on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” Oz claimed investigators believe foreign actors tied to Russia, China, and Cuba have been connected to large-scale fraud operations involving hospice care, medical equipment, and federal reimbursement programs.
“We’ve got Russian government involvement, we believe, in Los Angeles,” Oz said. “We’ve got the Chinese government involved in a big fraud ring in New York.”