UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH) stock dipped 1% on Wednesday after reports that the Trump administration will temporarily stop Medicare enrollments for newly formed home healthcare and hospice providers. The halt follows an announcement from an anti-fraud task force operating under Vice President JD Vance.
Officials said the nationwide moratorium is intended to provide the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) with a pause to review hospice and home health expenditures under Medicare and to produce further guidance. According to a senior administration official, the move targets concerns over how quickly fraudulent home health and hospice businesses can be set up and begin billing Medicare.
Data cited from the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission shows the scale of the programs under review: in 2024, 1.8 million Medicare beneficiaries received hospice care at a reported cost of $28.3 billion, while 2.7 million patients received home healthcare at a reported cost of $16 billion.
The U.S. home health market includes large operators such as BrightSpring Health Services, private equity-backed Matrix Medical Network, and UnitedHealth. In the hospice segment, VITAS Healthcare - a subsidiary of Chemed Corporation - is listed among top providers.
This moratorium follows prior actions by the administration to curb alleged healthcare fraud. Earlier this year, Medicare enrollments by suppliers of durable medical equipment were paused in February. The administration has also criticized certain Democratic-led states, naming California and Minnesota as examples it says have not done enough to combat fraud, and it increased oversight of hospices in Georgia and Ohio during the prior year.
Industry groups estimate tens of billions of dollars are lost annually in the United States to healthcare fraud, a drain that organizations warn raises costs for patients and employers, according to the National Health Care Anti-Fraud Association.
The temporary nationwide pause on new enrollments is designed to allow CMS to re-evaluate spending patterns and to develop additional guidance for the hospice and home-health sectors, while the anti-fraud task force and federal oversight continue to probe vulnerabilities in provider enrollment and billing.