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| Government Corruption |
| Federal Watchdog Reveals Rampant Obamacare Fraud; 90% Of Bad-Doc Applicants Approved In Undercover Test |
| 2025-12-05 |
| [ZeroHedge] A new bombshell report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) details a long-running vulnerability in the Affordable Care Act exchanges, showing that weak verification controls continue to expose federal subsidies to significant fraud and abuse. “Preliminary results from GAO's ongoing covert testing suggest fraud risks in the advance premium tax credit (APTC) persist,� the report reads. “The federal Marketplace approved coverage for nearly all of GAO's fictitious applicants in plan years 2024 and 2025, generally consistent with similar GAO testing in plan years 2014 through 2016.� According to the report, GAO conducted undercover tests by creating fictitious applicants with fake identities and fraudulent or never-issued Social Security numbers to see how the federal Marketplace would respond. Over the past two years, 90% of those fake applicants were approved for subsidized coverage despite lacking required documentation. In plan year 2024, all four of GAO’s fabricated applicants were approved and received about $2,350 per month in subsidies paid to insurers, even though they failed to provide proof of Social Security numbers, citizenship, or income. GAO scaled up the test for 2025 to 20 fake applicants; 18 were still enrolled as of September 2025, generating more than $10,000 per month in subsidies More broadly, GAO's preliminary analyses identified vulnerabilities related to potential SSN misuse and likely unauthorized enrollment changes in federal Marketplace data for plan years 2023 and 2024. Such issues can contribute to APTC that is not reconciled through enrollees' tax filings to determine the amount of premium tax credit for which enrollees were ultimately eligible. GAO's preliminary analysis of data from tax year 2023 could not identify evidence of reconciliation for over $21 billion in APTC for enrollees who provided SSNs to the federal Marketplace for plan year 2023. Unreconciled APTC may not necessarily represent overpayments, as enrollees who did not reconcile may have been eligible for the subsidy. However, it may include overpayments for enrollees who were not eligible for APTC. |
| Posted by:Skidmark |
| #1 |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2025-12-05 12:11 |