{"id":885438,"date":"2026-10-17T11:06:24","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T11:06:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885438\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T11:06:24","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T11:06:24","slug":"medi-cal-fraud-a-state-report-says-california-isnt-doing-enough","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/885438\/","title":{"rendered":"Medi-Cal fraud: A state report says California isn\u2019t doing enough"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>By <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/calmatters.org\/author\/jocelyn-wiener\/&quot;\" title=\"&quot;Posts\" by=\"\" jocelyn=\"\" wiener=\"\" class=\"&quot;author\" url=\"\" fn=\"\" rel=\"&quot;author&quot;\">Jocelyn Wiener<\/a>, CalMatters<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t<img decoding=\"async\" width=\"&quot;1200&quot;\" height=\"&quot;800&quot;\" src=\"&quot;https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/calmatters.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/07262022_MLKHospital_PU_CM_03.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&amp;ssl=1&quot;\" class=\"&quot;attachment-post-thumbnail\" size-post-thumbnail=\"\" wp-post-image=\"\" alt=\"&quot;Medical\" equipment=\"\" and=\"\" supplies=\"\" are=\"\" organized=\"\" on=\"\" rolling=\"\" carts=\"\" in=\"\" a=\"\" hospital=\"\" hallway.=\"\" monitor=\"\" disinfecting=\"\" wipes=\"\" folded=\"\" blue=\"\" gowns=\"\" visible=\"\" with=\"\" computer=\"\" workstation=\"\" the=\"\" background=\"\" privacy=\"\" curtains=\"\" along=\"\" one=\"\" side=\"\" of=\"\" corridor.=\"\" decoding=\"&quot;async&quot;\" loading=\"&quot;lazy&quot;\"  https:=\"\" \/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\tThe Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Los Angeles on July 26, 2022. Photo by Pablo Unzueta for CalMatters<\/p>\n<p>This story was originally published by <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/calmatters.org\/&quot;\">CalMatters<\/a>. <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/calmatters.org\/subscribe-to-calmatters\/&quot;\">Sign up<\/a> for their newsletters.<\/p>\n<p>Is California doing enough to curtail <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/calmatters.org\/tag\/medi-cal\/&quot;\">Medi-Cal <\/a>fraud?<\/p>\n<p>The state auditor doesn\u2019t think so.<\/p>\n<p>A report released Thursday by Grant Parks, the state auditor, suggests the Department of Health Care Services is ill-equipped to stop pervasive abuse in Medi-Cal, a program that serves about 14 million Californians and pays out $200 billion annually.<\/p>\n<p>The report described a \u201chistory of concern\u201d about the department\u2019s oversight of Medi\u2011Cal providers and classified it as \u201chigh-risk\u201d for fraud, waste and abuse. The Department was first given the designation in 2007 for other reasons, including concerns about organizational restructuring and policymakers\u2019 calls for increased accountability and program effectiveness.<\/p>\n<p>In its response, the department disagreed with the auditor\u2019s findings, saying the report \u201comits critical information and context, resulting in an incomplete analysis\u201d and that it highlights \u201cisolated anecdotes while ignoring system-wide data showing effective systems and controls.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The report listed several concerning examples:<\/p>\n<p>Two medical providers billed almost $1.6 million in Medi-Cal services in 2024-25, despite having been deemed ineligible to participate in the program several years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>One transportation provider claimed to have driven 35 people in a single day, nine of them traveling more than 340 miles apiece. If this info was legitimate, the report said, the transportation provider would have traveled more than 3,000 miles on a single day in a single vehicle for those nine trips alone, not to mention the other 26. The provider took in more than $11 million in 2024-25.<\/p>\n<p>Of the 28,000 Medi-Cal providers considered at highest risk of fraud or abuse, the report said, the Department had not begun investigations into 26,000.<\/p>\n<p>This article was <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/calmatters.org\/health\/2026\/10\/california-medi-cal-fraud-state-report\/&quot;\">originally published on CalMatters<\/a> and was republished under the <a href=\"&quot;https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/&quot;\">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives<\/a> license.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\tCopy HTML<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Jocelyn Wiener, CalMatters The Martin Luther King Community Hospital in Los Angeles on July 26, 2022. Photo&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":885439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253,2014],"class_list":["post-885438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health-care","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-medi-cal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=885438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/885438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/885439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=885438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=885438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=885438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}