The lights were still on in Sacramento, the press releases were flying, and Gavin Newsom’s office was patting itself on the back for “cracking down” on hospice fraud. Meanwhile, in a corner of Van Nuys, 197 hospice agencies were registered to one single address. One. Address. Let that sink in like a bad prescription.
Republican Assemblywoman Alexandra Macedo didn’t just read the spreadsheet and shake her head. She got in her car, drove to 14545 Friar Street, and saw the masterpiece for herself. What she found wasn’t a bustling medical campus full of compassionate nurses tending to the dying. It was a run-down building with a “Medical Plaza” sign that apparently did all the heavy lifting.
No patients. No doctors. No nurses. No signs of life — which is darkly ironic for a place supposedly home to nearly 200 end-of-life care providers.
“No patient, by the way,” Macedo said. “I did not see a single person coming in or out of the building, or doctors or nurses or anything like that.”
And here’s where it gets stupid. California said it was handling this. Newsom’s administration pointed to a moratorium on new hospice licenses and a shiny multi-agency task force. That’s bureaucrat-speak for “we held meetings about holding meetings.” A moratorium doesn’t explain how 197 agencies were already squatting at one address like it was a clown car for Medicare billing. A task force doesn’t explain why those agencies were still active long enough for a state assemblywoman to find them with a Google search and a set of car keys.
The Fraud Trail Was a Highway
This didn’t sneak up on anyone. Los Angeles County has been the hospice fraud capital of California for years. Auditors found that L.A. hospice providers overbilled Medicare by roughly $105 million between 2017 and 2019. More than 700 of the roughly 1,800 hospice agencies in L.A. County had two or more fraud indicators. Overlapping addresses, recycled administrators, phantom medical directors — all of it sitting in state records like a neon sign that read “STEAL HERE.”
The state got audit recommendations. The state got complaints — about 2,100 of them between January 2015 and August 2021, including nearly 350 alleging outright fraud or abuse. The state got warnings about organized networks gaming Medicare and Medi-Cal. And the state did what the state does best under Newsom: absolutely nothing meaningful.
Republicans Called It Out — In Writing
Macedo and several Republican lawmakers sent a letter to Newsom urging him to adopt the emergency regulations a 2022 state audit recommended. The letter didn’t mince words.
“It has been four years since the audit report; your Administration has failed to protect families in the most difficult moment of their lives. Most people have never had to choose hospice before; they do not know what questions to ask, what warning signs to look for, or who to trust. That is why state oversight matters, and right now the system is broken.”
Four years. Four years of families trusting a system that was being looted by fraudsters operating out of what looks like an abandoned strip mall. These aren’t faceless victims. These are people watching their parents, their spouses, their grandparents die — turning to agencies that exist only on paper to bill the government.
The Newsom Special
This is classic Newsom governance. Announce a crackdown. Stage a press conference. Use words like “accountability” and “reform.” Then let the rot continue underneath while you campaign for your next job. The man runs California like a guy who paints over black mold and calls himself a contractor.
Compare that with what’s happening at the federal level. Trump signed an executive order launching a “whole of government” assault on fraud — a task force that actually has teeth, not just talking points. Trump didn’t tiptoe around the problem. He sent in the bulldozer. Whether Newsom’s hospice disaster gets caught in that federal net remains to be seen, but at least someone in government seems interested in stopping people from robbing dying Americans blind.
Phone numbers that don’t work. Agencies that don’t exist. A building that’s falling apart. And a governor who swears it’s all under control. Nearly 200 fake hospice operations stacked on top of each other at one address in Van Nuys, and the best Sacramento can offer is a press release about how hard they’re working.
Gavin Newsom didn’t crack down on hospice fraud. He gave it a parking spot.
