During part of an interview with CNN aired on Thursday’s broadcast of “The Story Is,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta (D) said that he doesn’t think the large hospice fraud issue continuing years after the problem became known is “a failure. I think it’s a sign of the scope and scale of the problem.”
After Bonta cited the moratorium on hospice licenses that has been in place since 2022, host Elex Michaelson asked, “Because there was so much fraud, they said, we’ve got to stop the licensing?”
Bonta answered, “Oh yeah, there was a state audit, there was legislative attention to this, policymakers, leaders, the leaders of the California Department of Health, which issues the licenses, the governor, my team, like, yes, flags were raised.”
Michaelson then asked, “And the fact that, clearly, since at least 2022, you’ve known this was a big problem, if not before then, and that it’s still such a big problem, that L.A. County is still the hotbed of all this, that all this is still going on, in some ways, is that a failure of the state or the federal government, everybody, to regulate this?”
Bonta answered, “I don’t think it’s a failure. I think it’s a sign of the scope and scale of the problem.”
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