June 1 marked the start of Medicare Fraud Prevention Week. While this week shines a spotlight on fraud prevention, protecting Medicare is a year-round mission.
As the leaders of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Administration for Community Living (ACL), we know protecting taxpayer dollars and safeguarding beneficiaries requires constant vigilance across the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) every day of the year.
In 2025 alone, CMS suspended more than $5.7 billion in suspicious payments and launched investigations into thousands of potentially fraudulent Medicare providers and suppliers. This year, CMS has suspended Medicare payments to hundreds of potentially phony hospices, many of which didn't even bother calling to dispute our decision.
CMS also just recently issued nationwide moratoria on new Medicare enrollments for hospices, home health agencies, and durable medical equipment suppliers until we can develop the safeguards necessary to stop bad actors from exploiting the system. Existing providers will continue delivering these vital services to beneficiaries while CMS closes off pathways for new fraudsters to enter the program.
As a partner in the Medicare fraud fight, ACL supports a national network of grantees and team members, many of them volunteers, known as the Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP). The SMPs provide free, unbiased one-on-one assistance to Medicare enrollees, their families, and caregivers to help people identify potential fraud, review billing concerns, and report suspected scams. They are the local connection between Medicare and the older adults and people with disabilities who rely on it for their healthcare benefits and services.
Annually, the SMPs reach almost 2.5 million people through community outreach and education, and help more than 300,000 people, one-on-one, navigate their Medicare questions and concerns. SMP team members provide more than 550,000 hours to the program each year, most of which is spent helping individuals identify and report suspected cases of fraud. To give just one example of this program’s positive work, an SMP in 2024 helped identify a doctor who was signing orders for genetic testing and durable medical equipment without seeing, speaking to, or otherwise treating patients. That case resulted in the arrest and conviction of the doctor involved, including a judgment of more than $35 million to be paid back to Medicare.
Although HHS is fighting fraud 365 days a year, it’s still worth taking the time this week to remind ourselves, the people who depend on our programs, and the taxpayers who fund them, why stopping health care scams is a top priority for this administration and how we can work together to pursue that goal.
The answer is simple: protecting Medicare means protecting access to care for today’s beneficiaries and preserving the program for future generations. Fraud destroys the public trust that sustains these programs. It increases the burden on taxpayers. And it harms the most vulnerable Americans by siphoning off scarce resources.
The audacity of these scams can be shocking. One provider billed Medicare over $9 million for 7,200 skin substitute bandages over a three-month period—for a single patient! This patient supposedly had a wound the size of a sheet of printer paper, but the paperwork showed no doctor visits, no record of a wound, and no prescriptions for pain medication or antibiotics. Another provider claimed that a patient went through 20 catheters a day for three months and billed Medicare $19,000 for them. When we reached out to the patient, he told us he didn’t use catheters at all.
The cost of fraud isn’t just financial either. Criminals who are willing to steal money from beneficiaries are often willing to steal their health and even their life. Medicare beneficiaries who are signed up for hospice care without their consent lose access to their regular benefits and must go through several laborious steps to get them restored. In a case identified by the California SMP, a beneficiary’s lifesaving surgery was canceled due to a fraudulent hospice enrollment, putting her life in jeopardy. In another example, an elderly hospice patient in the Los Angeles suburb of Carson died after being neglected and malnourished by scammers out to make a quick buck. Fraud has devastating, real-life consequences for Medicare beneficiaries and their families.
HHS will continue cracking down on these abuses, but we need your help. People with Medicare and their families are the first line of defense against health care fraud.
Here’s how you can get involved:
- Ignore, delete, and block. Don’t respond to unsolicited texts and emails offering free medical services or supplies.
- Guard your card. Only share your beneficiary number with trusted health care providers. Anyone who offers you prepaid debit cards or other perks in exchange for your number is trying to scam you.
- Go over statements carefully. Make sure nobody’s billing Medicare for services you didn’t receive.
- Report suspected fraud. Call 1-800-MEDICARE to report fraud or reach out to your local Senior Medicare Patrol by calling 1-877-808-2468.
Again, we want to thank the SMP team members for all their hard work, serving as trusted local partners that help beneficiaries detect, prevent, and report fraud in their communities. We want them to know that under this administration, they have a true partner and a protector in the White House.
We’re done asking taxpayers to shell out more of their hard-earned money and letting older adults and people with disabilities go without essential care so criminals can buy themselves mansions and sports cars with their stolen millions. Together with the help of the SMPs and you, we’re cutting the fraudsters off, shutting them down, and locking them up—this week and every week.