The moves are related to Vice President JD Vance's anti-fraud task force, which has been accelerating its messaging before the November elections. The panel set up by Republican President Donald Trump seeks to crack down on potential misuse of public money.
The most significant step Wednesday came from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services with a nationwide six-month moratorium on all new Medicare enrollments by providers of hospice and home care.
“We’ve seen systemic and deeply troubling fraud in the hospice and home health space, with bad actors exploiting some of our most vulnerable Medicare patients and stealing money from the American taxpayer,” the agency's administrator, Dr. Mehmet Oz, said in a statement. “Today we’re shutting the door on fraud — preventing new bad actors from entering Medicare while we aggressively identify, investigate, and remove those already exploiting them.”
The Department of Health and Human Services' internal watchdog has sent letters to state attorneys general warning them to vigorously investigate possible fraud or risk losing federal money.
The administration contends the enrollment freeze and other actions it is taking will help prevent potential fraud in Medicaid and Medicare and preserve funding and resources for people most in need. Under the six-month pause, existing hospice and home health care providers will continue to operate as usual. But CMS said it will “intensify targeted investigations, deploy advanced data analytics, and accelerate the removal” of providers in the category that are suspected of fraudulent activity.
Such a freeze is not unprecedented, said Tricia Neumann, a senior vice president and executive director for the program on Medicare policy at the health care research nonprofit KFF. She said President Bill Clinton's Democratic administration also imposed a temporary moratorium on home health agencies.
“A brief moratorium gives the administration time to crack down on true fraud and prevent new fraudulent entities from popping up,” she said.
