THIS is what real journalism looks like. You may not recognize it if you’ve watched mainstream news for most of your life so prepare to be shocked. Luke is an absolute treasure to journalism. 👏👏👏
— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) October 31, 2026
HARRISBURG, Pa. — Ram Kuma Chhetri has a routine.
Every morning at 6 a.m., he pulls into the driveway of a nearby home, sits in the car for two or three minutes, then leaves. At 5 p.m., he does the same: drives up, fiddles with his phone in the driver’s seat, then returns home.
Why does he do this every day?
Pennsylvania allows poor elderly people to steer government Medicaid payments to their relatives or friends for helping them cook, clean and perform other everyday in-home tasks. Its version of the program is so generous that home care is now the most common profession in the state. A “home care” aide only has to do one thing to get the state to pay out: use a GPS-enabled phone app that confirms that the worker is at his client’s house when he clocks in and clocks out.
To anyone checking the system, Chhetri, a Bhutanese refugee, appears to be working 11 hours a day, seven days a week caring for an elderly person, work that unleashes $82,000 in government payments. In reality, he seems to spend five minutes a day in her driveway.
The Daily Wire amassed months of footage of Chhetri doing this like clockwork. As he left one afternoon, he gave me a smile and wave before lighting up a cigarette as he piloted his electric car at the turtle-like pace of a man with nothing to do.
No-show “home care” work is so common in Pennsylvania that it’s no longer viewed as something to hide. In August, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration arrested a drug trafficker in the state who asked the agents to let him out of handcuffs so he could clock out of the home health shift he was supposedly working. When they pointed out that that was illegal, he seemed confused, saying, “Everyone is doing this. If this is a problem, you’ll have to arrest the whole city.”
But even arresting the whole city may not stop the fraud: One home health care scam was being operated from a prison.
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