18% Of America's Home Health Care Billing Comes From Los Angeles County

California Governor Gavin Newsom does not want Americans to believe their lying eyes:

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2026/01/30/newsom-files-a-civil-rights-complaint-against-dr-oz-in-latest-feud-with-the-trump-administration/88430142007/

Newsom files a civil rights complaint against Dr. Oz in latest feud with the Trump administration
By Jaimie Ding and Ali Swenson - January 30, 2026

AP, Los Angeles – California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office is demanding a civil rights investigation of Dr. Mehmet Oz, saying he discriminated against Armenians in a video claiming hospice fraud in Los Angeles, the latest front in the state’s ongoing battle with the Trump administration.

The Democratic governor's complaint, filed Thursday, came after Oz posted a video on social media in front of an Armenian bakery in Los Angeles, alleging that roughly $3.5 billion in hospice and home care fraud has taken place in the city and “quite a bit of it” was run by “the Russian Armenian mafia.” Oz is the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which certifies hospice providers to accept patients on government-subsidized health insurance.

Newsom's office argued in the complaint that Oz “spewed baseless and racially charged allegations" that risked chilling participation in hospice and home care programs among the community targeted. His office said the claims had “already caused real-world harm” by dampening business at an Armenian bakery that is shown in the video.

“Mafia? There is no Armenian mafia going on here. We’re just hardworking business owners. I don’t understand why he’s mentioning just Armenians,” Movses Bislamyan, whose family-owned bakery appears in Oz’s video, told KABC-TV.

Oz and CMS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment on the complaint or the content of the video, and they haven't publicly shared details about the fraud being alleged.

Oz’s video also points to a larger Trump administration effort to spotlight fraud around the country. That effort comes after allegations of fraud involving day care centers run by Somali residents in Minneapolis prompted a massive immigration crackdown in the Midwestern city, resulting in widespread protests.

Earlier in the week, Newsom acknowledged fraud in hospice care in California but said the state has been working for years to crack down on it. He noted he signed a law in 2021 to stop providing new hospice licenses over fraud concerns and said the state has revoked more than 280 hospice licenses in recent years. Another 300 hospices are being examined for possible fraud, Newsom’s office said. The state did not immediately provide a list of all businesses that have had their licenses revoked.

“We’ve identified and cracked down on hospice fraud for years, taking real action to protect patients and taxpayers,” Newsom said in a statement.

Oz's video shows him visiting the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles and pointing to a four-block radius that he says is home to 42 hospices, suggesting potential fraud. He references a business that he says was part of a $16 million fraud scheme. Oz describes the Armenian script on the businesses' signs while the camera pans to the bakery.

"You notice the lettering and language behind me is of that dialect,” says Oz, whose parents emigrated to the U.S. from Turkey. He also claims there “has not been a lot of attention on these problems” in California.

Aram Hamparian, executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, said Oz’s comments invoke “easy stereotypes” about the Armenian community, which has deep roots in California.

More than 200,000 people of Armenian descent are estimated to live in Los Angeles County, where April is celebrated as Armenian History Month. A small section of Los Angeles is known as Little Armenia, and the suburban city of Glendale, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) from where Oz recorded the video, is a center of the community.

Hamparian said Oz’s connections to Turkey are concerning. That nation's government does not acknowledge the killing and deportation of Armenians by Ottoman Empire forces in the early 1900s, known as the Armenian genocide.

“Things have been dealt with at the state level, prosecutions have been made,” Hamparian said. “But Dr. Oz is taking this in an entirely destructive direction by scapegoating, by fear-mongering, by staging the theatric collective indictment of all Armenians.”

Turkey and Armenia have long been strained by historic grievances and Turkey’s alliance with Azerbaijan. The neighboring countries have no formal diplomatic ties, and their joint border has remained closed since the 1990s, though late last year they agreed to simplify visa procedures in an effort to normalize ties.

The feud is among many that have sprung up between Newsom, seen as a potential Democratic presidential candidate for 2028, and the Republican administration of President Donald Trump. Newsom and Trump have clashed over issues ranging from the federal administration’s National Guard deployment in Los Angeles to the president’s efforts to block California’s 2035 ban on new gas-powered cars, a nationwide first.

41% of California's job growth since 2019 comes from a single Medi-Cal program: In-Home Supportive Services.  IHSS is available to citizens, legal residents, and illegal residents.  IHSS “provider" is now the most common job in California, with 800,000 practitioners

During FY 2026, California's In-Home Supportive Services cost the state $ 10.6 billion and the Federal Government $ 18 billion.  None of these funds pay for traditional health care in medical settings:

https://www.thecentersquare.com/california/article_875f12ea-0e73-4b96-9b3b-da4f14f4ec20.html

Medi-Cal spends $608M monthly on cooking, cleaning home services, even for illegal immigrants
By Kenneth Schrupp | February 2, 2026

(The Center Square) – Medi-Cal is paying an estimated $608 million per month for cooking, shopping, cleaning, and laundry services for elderly and disabled low-income California residents – including illegal immigrants – at their homes and mostly paid to their relatives, state records show.

These services are part of a federally-and-state-funded program called In-Home Supportive Services, which was designed to get people assistance at home without having to move to an expensive facility. But the program has grown so rapidly that it is responsible for 41% of job gains in California since January 2019, when Gov. Gavin Newsom took office.

By the end of 2025, the program had grown to 799,379 taxpayer-funded “providers,” making IHSS “provider," according to federal occupational data, the most common job in the state.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded by accusing The Center Square of having “California Derangement Syndrome" after the news organization asked about the dominance of IHSS in California employment, citing federal statistics.

Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos also questioned the cited numbers.

“We don’t respond to fairy tale statistics,” she wrote in an email to The Center Square. “We’re sorry that your California Derangement Syndrome has led you down this sad path.”

Four minutes before Gallegos’ response, California’s Employment Development Department released its own report on the state’s net loss of 11,200 nonfarm payroll jobs in 2025, which would have been over seven times worse if not for IHSS growth.

The governor’s office did not respond to a follow-up with the state’s own figures.

The majority of IHSS providers are relatives of and live with recipients, and are paid an average of $18.33 per hour. The average recipient is authorized for 118.4 hours per month, thus earning the average provider an estimated $2,170.27 per month.

“We see a growth in government jobs, and dramatic decrease in private sector jobs in California, and that is very alarming and unsustainable,” said Assemblyman Carl DeMaio, R-San Diego, in an interview with The Center Square. “Not only are these not good jobs, they are literally a conduit of funding for political campaigns for the politicians that have established them.”

Since January 2019, government jobs, and taxpayer-funded jobs in healthcare and education grew by 852,400 jobs, while all other industries combined lost a net 139,300 payroll jobs. During this time, the U.S. Census estimates state’s population also declined by 156,914 residents.

As DeMaio noted, IHSS members are unionized, under SEIU Local 2015. Another SEIU healthcare union, SEIU-UHW, recently introduced a ballot measure to institute a wealth tax on California billionaires.

For the ongoing fiscal year, the state budget allocated $3.3 million for California to “support IHSS collective bargaining and its potential transition to state level collective bargaining,” suggesting changes in compensation for IHSS providers may be coming soon. This means provider wages could rise to match the state’s $25 per hour healthcare minimum wage, which would increase base labor costs for the program by 36%.

To receive paid in-home care through IHSS, a recipient is supposed visited by a social worker to establish the maximum number of allowable billable hours. There are also supposed to be scheduled visits to review the need for services.

IHSS breaks these services into two categories: domestic and related services, and personal care services.

Combined monthly billing for both domestic and personal services provided through the program is an estimated $1.6 billion per month for 85 million hours of work. IHSS is projected to cost $29.9 billion in the ongoing fiscal year, an 11.9% increase over the prior year — reflecting the program’s compounding costs.

In December, the average IHSS provider was authorized to provide 45.9 hours of care across the domestic and related services category, though not all services are utilized by each recipient (use rates range from 80.5% through 83.5%). These include domestic services — such as cleaning — buying food, preparing and cleaning after meals, laundry, and other shopping and errands.

Food-related domestic services represent a combined 35.7 hours of authorized work per recipient each month, reflected in 25.7 million hours of billable work across the IHSS workforce. At the typical IHSS wage, that’s $472 million per month on just those food-related services — domestic services, laundry, and other shopping and errands cost another $136 million per month.

Personal care includes a much wider array of services, and wider variance in usage, ranging from menstrual care (4.4% of recipients) to dressing (88.8% of recipients). Billing hours for personal care added up to 51.9 million hours per month at a taxpayer-funded cost of $951 million per month.

During last year's budget cycle for the ongoing fiscal year, a proposal to eliminate IHSS coverage for illegal immigrants was ultimately not adopted. The state did adopt a freeze on new illegal immigrant enrollment in Medi-Cal for adults over 19 years old starting in January 2026.

While there is a long-standing rule technically barring illegal immigrants from serving as IHSS providers, illegal immigrants already enrolled in Medi-Cal are still able to secure IHSS-funded care.

OBBBA cuts, then LA raises taxes.

If someone wanted to localize healthcare costs, they're doing a pretty good job.

https://www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/la-county-supervisors-to-consider-sales-tax-hike-for-healthcare/3844821/

LA County supervisors place sales-tax for health care on June election ballot

The county sales tax currently stands at 9.75%. The latest proposed hike would increase it to 10.25%.

City News Service    |    February 10, 2026 

Los Angeles County voters will decide in June whether to approve a temporary half-cent sales tax in an effort to support healthcare services at a time of reductions in state and federal funding.

The county's board of supervisors on Tuesday approved placing the measure on the June election ballot.

The proposal, introduced by Supervisors Holly Mitchell and Hilda Solis in January, is called the Essential Services Restoration Act. It asks voters to enact the half-cent general sales tax increase for five years, through Oct. 1, 2031.

An estimated $1 billion would be generated from the measure, according to the county.

The county sales tax currently stands at 9.75%. The latest proposed hike would increase it to 10.25%.

After hours of debate and public discussion Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors agreed on a 4-1 vote, with Supervisor Kathryn Barger dissenting, to place the proposal on the June ballot.

"Backfilling federal funding cuts on the backs of county taxpayers is not acceptable," Barger said in a statement after the vote. "Los Angeles County residents are already stretched thin. Last year, Bloomberg News reported that Los Angeles now has the highest sales tax rates of any major metropolitan region in the nation. This proposed half-cent increase would push us even
higher, making our county less affordable for families and less appealing for consumers to shop and businesses to operate. We are risking imposing higher everyday costs and small businesses and employers choosing to leave Los Angeles County altogether."

Mitchell argued during the meeting, however, that healthcare services in the county will face dire losses if the board takes no action to restore funding that she said was slashed under the federal budget bill passed earlier this year.

The county sales tax already increased in April 2025 after voters approved Measure A, a half-cent sales hike that replaced Measure H, a quarter-cent sales tax. The funding from the tax supports homeless prevention initiatives.

Mitchell, who represents the Second District, encompassing south LA County cities and unincorporated areas, worked with a coalition of healthcare organizations and workers, called Restore Healthcare for Angelenos, on the proposal. Coalition members have said that if the supervisors had not approved the proposal, they would have launched a signature-gathering campaign to place the measure on the November ballot anyway.

Last year's federal budget bill, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," which was approved and signed by Congress and President Donald Trump, detailed billions of dollars of reductions in healthcare funding. Those reductions to Medi-Cal, coupled with eligibility changes, will impact county residents, who could face loss of coverage and reduced access to care.

"The county's most impacted departments face projected losses totaling $2.4 billion over the next three years,'' the supervisors' motion reads. "Due to funding losses, county officials have already initiated hiring freezes and are contemplating service consolidations, potential layoffs of 5,000 staff, and facility closures in the coming years."

State funding reductions in healthcare are exacerbating the issue. Due to budget constraints, California rolled back health care coverage for undocumented immigrants and reduced funding for other initiatives.

In January, the California Department of Health Care Services stopped enrolling new adult patients without legal status in its state-funded health care program, Medi-Cal. The state is expected to cut non-emergency dental care for immigrants here illegally who are already enrolled in the program.

State officials agreed to enact a $30 monthly premium starting in July 2027 for immigrants who remain on the program, including those with legal status.

Federal dollars do not support these initiatives, as using federal funding for those here illegally is against the law.

A similar sales tax hike was approved in November by voters in Santa Clara County to address reductions in federal funding on health care, and some labor unions are pushing for a proposed statewide billionaires tax to support the health care system.

If approved by county voters, the proposed measure would further establish a nine-member citizens' oversight committee to ensure fiscal accountability for any revenue raised, which involves annual independent audits and making recommendations on how to allocate the funding.

Committee members would serve three-year terms and they would be eligible for reappointment by the Board of Supervisors.

Money raised by the tax measure would be expended as follows:

up to 47% would support the county Department of Health Services;
about 5% would benefit school-based health needs and programs as determined by the governing board of L.A. Care Health Plan;
another 10% would support the county Department of Public Health and its core public health functions;
about 5% would be allocated to the county Department of Public Social Services to support Medicaid outreach and enrollment activities, and volunteer programs;
another 2.5% would go toward the Correctional Health Services;
some 22% would fund DHS to safeguard public hospitals and clinic services;
about 5% would be allocated to support nonprofit hospitals in the county, and provided funding to entities that meet certain criteria;
another 2.5% would support in-home supportive services for seniors and people with disabilities;
about 1% would support the cities of Pasadena and Long Beach, which have separate Public Health Departments from the county; and
any remaining funds would be disbursed in a need-based manner focused on emergency department volume.
The Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association has criticized the proposed sales-tax measure.

"The sales tax is already too high in Los Angeles County, so high that the most recent half-percent increase for homelessness services required special legislation from the state to allow it to exceed the cap on local sales taxes that is in state law. Raising the sales tax again is unreasonable and unfairly harsh on those who are least able to afford it,'' the association said in a statement.

The organization is working to qualify an initiative constitutional amendment to rescind recently approved special taxes and ensure a two-third vote requirement for all local special taxes.