Tipsheet

CBS News Exposed the Massive California Hospice Fraud Happening on Gavin Newsom's Watch

Amy Curtis
Amy Curtis  |  March 11, 2026 10:00 AM

As head of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Dr. Mehmet Oz has been sounding the alarm on hospice fraud in California for weeks. In January, Dr. Oz said it was clear something wasn't right, noting that there were some hospice services where 100 percent of patients were surviving beyond the normal six-month window. 

"They realized that they could pay doctors to move people into hospice," Dr. Oz said at the time. "The hospice is designed for the last six months of your life. It means you're going to die. These hospice programs are created when the most common reason that you'd enter it is cancer. But these days, not everyone with cancer dies, but also you're putting a lot of people with Alzheimer's and other conditions in there. So it became a little harder to police."

Hospice is designed for patients with a terminal illness and a life expectancy of six months or less. While many hospice patients do have a diagnosis of cancer, the majority now have other terminal illnesses, including heart disease, lung disease, or dementia/Alzheimer's.

Under hospice rules, a patient must undergo periodic recertification, where a qualified provider (e.g. a hospice nurse, nurse practitioner, or doctor) evaluates the patient for signs of decline. When a patient is admitted to hospice for the first time, the first and second recertification periods occur at 90 and 180 days, then every 60 days thereafter. Clinicians look for ongoing signs of decline, including decreased appetite, muscle wasting (usually assessed by measuring upper arm circumference), disease progression, and skin breakdown in the form of non-healing pressure wounds.

According to CMS, the average length of stay on hospice is about 90 days, with the median stay being roughly 18 to 24 days. While some patients, usually those with chronic conditions like heart and lung disease, stay in hospice longer, many are also discharged alive or transferred to palliative care. It is, however, highly unusual that 100 percent of hospice patients survive the six-month period.

At the end of January, Dr. Oz provided another update with some startling numbers: the number of hospice agencies in L.A. county increased by 1,500 percent since 2010, far beyond the 40 percent increase in the senior population.

That raised all the red flags, and now CBS has done some digging and found that the indication of hospice fraud in California are not only there, but growing.

Here's more:

Medicare is federally administered, and hospices must be certified for reimbursements. But the state issues the licenses for hospices to operate.

Three years ago, California’s state auditor sounded the alarm that Los Angeles County had seen a 1,500% increase in hospice companies since 2010 – more than six times the national average relative to its elderly population.

Auditors estimated LA County hospices overbilled Medicare by $105 million in a single year. The report called out notable red flags – key warning signs of fraud: multiple hospices in one building, geographic clustering, low patient counts, high rates of terminally ill patients later discharged alive, excessive billing, and staff shared across multiple companies.

The state says it proceeded to investigate and revoke the licenses of 280 hospices.

But since then, the problem has continued to fester. CBS News examined the business and financial records of every hospice currently operating in LA County, applying the same indicators identified by the state. Indications of fraud have not stopped. In fact, they’ve grown.

And it's not just excessive billing, people are having their identities stolen to facilitate the fraud, it seems. CBS reported that Lynn Ianni, an active 69-year-old, was injured while playing pickleball. When she tried to get some physical therapy, she was told Medicare wouldn't cover it because she was dying and in hospice. “They said, ‘You're in hospice.’ And I said, ‘what? What are you talking about?” Ianni told CBS News. “‘Are you kidding me? Do I look like I’m in hospice?’” Her Medicare number had been stolen and used to enroll her fraudulently in hospice.

CBS Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss called the investigation "incredible."

It's clearly struck a nerve with Gavin Newsom's campaign, who responded to Weiss.

Yet, CBS has found examples of fraud persisting to this day, years after Newsom supposedly "cracked down" on it. Refusing to issue new licenses to hospice providers did nothing to address the thousands of fake agencies already operating and stealing taxpayer dollars.

The "Press Office" is also lying about President Trump removing hospice oversight, too.

It is a lie. The Trump administration stopped a Biden-era "special focus program" that addressed poor-performing providers and not fraud.

The reality is this: Newsom didn't crack down on fraud. He put a Band-Aid on a metaphorical stab wound and moved on.

Yes. Dr. Oz sent a letter to Newsom dated January 27, 2026. In that letter, Newsom was ordered to come up with a "comprehensive program integrity action plan" for addressing hospice fraud. Newsom has not done that.