If you want to know what happens when you mix big government with California-style “progressive” politics, look no further than the absolute disaster of Medicare fraud in Los Angeles County. Corruption is out of control. The number of hospice agencies there has skyrocketed by 1,500 percent since 2010, while the number of seniors barely budged. Does anyone seriously believe that many people suddenly need end-of-life care in LA? Or could it be that the left-wing bureaucrats, obsessed with expanding the welfare state, have opened the door to criminals robbing taxpayers blind?
Here’s how the scam works: shady operators grab hold of doctors’ credentials—sometimes without the doctors even realizing it—then rack up millions in bogus Medicare charges. Fake home healthcare agencies pop up in grimy strip malls, with doors that never open and staff nobody can find. One elderly doctor had his information linked to almost twenty supposed hospice businesses, billing tens of millions, even though he claims he never met the patients, and doesn’t know the companies using his name. Sound like a system anyone with common sense would trust?
This isn’t just some handful of crooks, either. It’s organized theft on a massive scale. Home health and hospice providers rotate licenses and patient names, playing a shell game to dodge audits. Taxpayers watch $3.5 billion vanish into thin air, while Democrat leaders shrug and pretend they’ve got it under control. They’re more interested in keeping the “free money” spigot wide open than protecting Americans who pay into Medicare their whole lives.
While blue states like California see thousands of hospice providers cashing in, states with even bigger populations have a tiny fraction of that number. Los Angeles County alone is responsible for nearly a fifth of all home healthcare billing nationwide! Meanwhile, the governor—golden boy of the coastal elite—acts shocked every time he’s caught asleep at the wheel. Sure, the state paused new hospice licenses, but hundreds of agencies that already exist keep running their scams, right under the noses of regulators. Liberals claim they’re the party of compassion, but all they actually do is create loopholes for criminals and make innocent Americans cover the tab.
Here’s the truth: when government grows, corruption flourishes. How many more billions need to be stolen before our leaders wake up and do their jobs? Or is letting fraudsters run wild just the price they’re willing to pay for bigger bureaucracies? Only in California could this mess be seen as “progress.”
Source: Townhall
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