Nursing Home Co-Owned by Trump Pick Is Suing Feds

Benjamin Landa is awaiting a Senate hearing on his nomination as US ambassador to Hungary, while co-owning a Bronx nursing home that's taking the Trump administration to court. After federal inspectors said Pinnacle Multicare Nursing and Rehabilitation Center improperly collected at least $31.2 million from Medicare, the government moved to claw the money back, ProPublica reports. Pinnacle responded with a February lawsuit asking a federal judge to halt the recoupment effort; the judge has so far refused to pause it. The suit names top health officials, including HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz.

Landa is a major Republican donor, giving $5 million to a pro-Trump super PAC months before his nomination, and holds stakes in more than 100 nursing homes in eight states. New York's attorney general has separately accused him and partners of siphoning millions from two facilities while residents allegedly suffered from neglect; Landa disputes the claims and is appealing adverse rulings. His lawyer calls the Medicare audit "absurdly flawed," arguing Pinnacle's billing reflected emergency decisions during COVID that saved lives.

Critics, including Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, say Landa is an example of "giant corporate health care interests that prey on the vulnerable and use clever tricks to exploit loopholes at taxpayers' expense."

• "It's no surprise that these companies and their owners are cozy with Trump: instead of accountability, they've been rewarded," Wyden says, with "plum political appointments and ambassadorships in Europe."
• Landa was nominated in October but no hearing has been scheduled yet. In Pennsylvania, the state's largest union of healthcare workers wrote to Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, urging him to reject the nomination, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. They cited the troubled record of the seven nursing homes in the state that he has a stake in.
• Members of SEIU Healthcare PA said Landa was an "architect" of a system in which for-profit nursing homes are starved of staff and resources. "We believe Ben Landa is a founder of this kind of care-cutting business approach," they wrote. "Nursing homes associated with Landa have an alarming record of fraud, human trafficking, and poor care."