Minnesota exposed how welfare fraudsters steal hundreds of millions in broad daylight while nobody watches.
California makes Minnesota look like small potatoes.
And John Kennedy just asked one question about exorcisms that shocked a Senate hearing.
The Question That Derailed a Senate Hearing
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche was before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee to testify about the Justice Department's budget when John Kennedy asked him about fraud in Medi-Cal, California's Medicaid program.
"California's got 12% of the population in the last 10 years," Kennedy told Blanche. "They're responsible for half of these new so-called health providers to provide exorcisms and other things. Now, what the hell are we doing about it? Why has this gone on for so long?"
A sitting United States senator just put the acting Attorney General on record about a billing category California opened with no clinical licensing requirements and no way for taxpayers to see the tab.
California's health agency didn't deny the program exists.
They just said they don't call them exorcisms – they're "CMS-approved Traditional Health Care Practices" defined by each tribal nation.
In October 2024, the Biden administration's CMS approved California's waiver to cover traditional healers and "natural helpers" within tribal communities, with services including music therapy and what the state describes as "spiritual interventions such as ceremonies, rituals and herbal remedies."
The rate for a single traditional healer encounter is set at $801.
The rate for a natural helper is $335.37.
To qualify as a traditional healer, a person must have served as a spiritual leader in a tribe for at least two years.
To qualify as a natural helper, a person simply needs to be considered a "trusted" member of the tribe – no clinical training required, no licensing board, no independent oversight of any kind.
Nobody at the state level has said how much this program has cost.
California's Department of Health and Human Services told Fox News Digital the spending is "incorporated into existing behavioral health funding."
That's a bureaucratic way of saying: we're not going to tell you.
Gavin Newsom Is Spending Your Tax Dollars on Exorcisms and Calling It Health Equity
California's Medicaid spending has doubled since 2019 – from $100.7 billion to a projected $222 billion in 2026.
In that same window, JD Vance's task force identified $600 million in suspected fraud just in home health and hospice – and suspended 221 California providers in a single crackdown.
Kennedy's number is the one that should make every taxpayer's head snap: California represents 12% of the national population but is responsible for half of all new providers billing in this spiritual services category.
Federal investigators saw the same pattern in Arizona, where a Pakistani national named Farrukh Ali allegedly ran a $650 million scheme – enrolling fake addiction clinics as Medicaid providers through tribal health channels and billing for services that were never delivered.
The DOJ charged 41 clinics in that case alone.
The playbook is always the same: someone creates a billing category with vague definitions, minimal oversight, and no cost cap.
Someone else figures out how to submit claims.
The checks clear because nobody is watching until it's too late.
Newsom called this expansion a way of "helping heal the historical wounds inflicted on tribes."
What he actually built is a billing structure where a person with zero clinical training, credentialed by their own community with no external verification, can bill $335 per encounter – and California's own health department cannot tell you how many encounters have been billed.
Vance Is Shutting Down the California Medicaid Fraud Machine One Door at a Time
Trump named Vance the nation's fraud czar in April, specifically targeting blue states where, as Trump put it, "crooked Democrat politicians have had a free for all in the unprecedented theft of taxpayer money."
California is the flagship case.
The administration has already suspended 447 hospice facilities and 23 home health agencies in the state, launched a six-month nationwide moratorium on new hospice provider enrollment, and frozen over $1.4 billion in federal Medicaid payments.
Kennedy's question to Blanche wasn't separate from that fight – it was the next front in it.
A billing category with no price list, no independent credentialing, and no public cost accounting is exactly the kind of door the California fraud machine walks through.
Vance is locking them.
Kennedy wants the people who left them open to answer for it.
Sources:
- Elaine Mallon, "Taxpayer spending on 'exorcisms' derails Senate testimony: 'What the hell are we doing about it?'" Fox News, May 21, 2026.
- Peter Pinedo, "Vance tapped as 'fraud czar' as Trump targets blue states over taxpayer theft," Fox News, April 3, 2026.
- Preston Mizell, "Vance anti-fraud task force suspends 221 California hospice and healthcare providers so far," Fox News, April 2, 2026.
- HHS Press Room, "Trump Administration Prioritizes Affordability by Announcing Major Crackdown on Health Care Fraud," HHS.gov, February 25, 2026.
- California DHCS, "Traditional Health Care Practices Public Notice," March 20, 2025.
- DOJ Office of Public Affairs, "National Health Care Fraud Takedown Results in 324 Defendants," Justice.gov, June 30, 2025.