[ZeroHedge] Taxpayers spent $65 billion on health insurance premiums for people who either didn't exist or didn't qualify for benefits in two federal programs in 2024, according to an Aug. 26 report from Paragon Health Institute.
Expanded Medicaid and Obamacare, the signature programs of the Affordable Care Act, improperly enrolled a combined 14.3 million people that year, researchers concluded.
But note that the Trump administration has already removed 1.25 million names that should not have been enrolled, for various reasons, and otherwise boosted security, saving $10 billion this far. Scroll down for details.
Expanded Medicaid allows states to enroll people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, versus up to 100 percent for traditional Medicaid. That limit was about $35,600 for a family of three in 2024.
Obamacare was open to people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level at that time, about $103,000 for a family of three.
Both programs are administered through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, with coverage provided by commercial insurance companies.
As Lawrence Wilson details below, via The Epoch Times, researchers estimate that about 34 percent of all Marketplace enrollees in 2024 were either fraudulent, duplicates, or simply didn't meet the benefit criteria.
And the number went up the next year, researchers said.
"Improper exchange enrollment increased by more than 26 percent from 2024 to 2025 - up to an estimated 6.5 million enrollees," the report stated.
ENROLLMENT PROBLEMS
Researchers studied federal data from surveys, program enrollment, and spending and concluded that more than 9 million Medicaid expansion enrollees in 2024 probably didn't qualify for the benefit.
Those were likely people whose income was over the limit, did not meet citizenship, immigration, or residency requirements, or should have been enrolled in traditional Medicaid.
With Obamacare, the $0 premium policies made possible during the post-COVID years became a target for fraud, according to Paragon President Brian Blase.
Testifying before Congress in December, Blase said many people were enrolled in the program without their knowledge by unscrupulous insurance brokers, prompting the federal government to send a commission check to them - and premium payments to an insurance company.
These phantom enrollees are detected in part by their lack of activity once enrolled, Blase said.
Also, 28 states had more people enrolled in Obamacare than there were people in the state who met the income requirements.
SKEPTICISM
Paragon had previously reported its enrollment analysis, though the cost calculation is new.
Based on previous reports, some observers have questioned the assertion that improper enrollment, particularly in Obamacare, is as widespread as the think tank concluded.
"There is no evidence of systemic fraud, waste, or abuse in [state-based marketplaces]," according to Covered California, the state's health insurance marketplace.
As for the lack of activity by some enrollees, America's Health Insurance Plans released a statement in 2025 saying, "A 'no-claims' year is evidence that a consumer stayed healthy or only had a few months of coverage - not that taxpayer money was misdirected or that their policy was illegitimate."
Others observers say Paragon's research method doesn't factor in all the variables. "There are a number of reasons why people who report incomes somewhat above 138 percent of the poverty line in a survey may be eligible for the Medicaid expansion," the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities said about a previous Paragon report.
Yet in December 2025, the Government Accountability Office reported that investigators were able to enroll 20 nonexistent identities in Obamacare in 2024 by using Social Security numbers that had never been issued to any person and other easily created counterfeit documents.
Of the 20 false enrollments, 18 were still active in September 2025, costing taxpayers more than $10,000 per month.
Investigators also found 26,000 accounts that received subsidies in 2023 based on Social Security numbers that matched records in the Social Security Administration's death file.
Taxpayers paid more than $94 million in subsidies for one year based on false enrollments uncovered by the investigators.
SAVINGS AND RECOVERY
This is the important bit:
The federal government has taken aggressive action to root out improper enrollment over the last two years.
That includes suspending agents and brokers from the program for suspected fraud, reinstating data matching between federal programs to prevent duplicate enrollment, canceling phantom enrollments, and requiring Medicaid eligibility recertification every six months.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported in January it had removed more than 1 million enrollees who were concurrently enrolled in Obamacare and Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, or who had failed to file and reconcile previously received subsidies.
Another 250,000 were removed who'd been enrolled without their consent.
Those actions produced $10 billion in annual savings, according to a government statement.
#2
A few bigger questions.
1. Of the stolen US taxpayer $$$$ how much was recovered?
2. In which top 10 states did it happened mostly?
3. The demographics of the thieves.
4. How many were arrested, and sentenced to prison?
5. How many were Illegals?
OBTW:
The US is "said to have" 8,133.5 tons of gold locked away. That's just enough to fund and run the USA 42 days. Wouldn't it be great is the USA could be run off the interest from the loans taxpayer make to banks and we paid no Income Taxes?
[Just The News] On at least five occasions during his final two decades in government, Dr. Anthony Fauci asked recipients of emails to delete the contents after reading them, according to newly released evidence from Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rand Paul that chronicles a culture of secrecy under America's former top doctor that extended to his dealings with U.S. spy agencies.
Fauci's contacts with the intelligence community included efforts to steer the CIA and the Director of National Intelligence's office toward scientists who were advocating that COVID-19 emerged naturally even as the FBI developed evidence that the deadly virus was man-made and may have leaked from a Chinese lab where research was funded by Fauci's agencies, the memos show.
For instance, a CIA memorandum stated that Fauci urged the agency to contact Robert Garry, Kristian Andersen and Eddie Holmes, "all three of whom have advocated for features of the virus that they judge to be consistent with a natural origin," according to a summary of the memos released this weekend by Paul.
Likewise, a July 12, 2021, email from ODNI states that Fauci had emphasized a scientific article and identified "the authors whose views he thought were particularly important." That article was written by Anderson, Holmes and Andrew Rambaut, the scientists who advocated the natural-origins theory of COVID.
The documents also show that the CIA struck an inter-agency contract with Fauci's agency, the National Institute for Infectious Disease and Allergy, on bioterrorism research, permitting the transfer of funds between the two agencies that would be unclassified but restricted from public release.
The undated contract released by Paul was to "conduct work to support BTC [biological threat characterization] relevant forensic research needs and focus on comparative genomic analysis of organisms considered agents of bioterrorism."
Some of that work appeared to focus on viruses that could kill humans.
For instance, one memo shows the CIA, on Sept. 4, 2015, asked Fauci's agency "for a paper outlining the rate of mutation, the number of passages from human to human to lock in these mutations (or to generate them), and the molecular genetic means through which this is likely to occur."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
