More than a million people are enrolled in ObamaCare without a Social Security number on file — and according to the Trump administration, that staggering number is a flashing red light for fraud the public was never supposed to see.
The figure was revealed by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz in a video posted over the weekend, PJ Media reported. “Why are we paying people we don’t know if they actually exist?” Kennedy asked.
According to Kennedy, the marketplace “is plagued by fraud, in large part because the Biden administration dismantled basic program integrity guardrails.” Chief among the warning signs: more than a million enrollees with no Social Security number attached to their accounts.
Oz laid out how the scheme works. “Shady insurance agents and other bad actors have been getting paid to enroll unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for,” he said. “They submit applications for fake people, enroll stolen identities, all to collect millions of dollars … from insurance companies for selling plans they never legitimately sold.”
The con has a built-in cloak. “These fraudsters deliberately pick plans with no premiums,” Kennedy explained. “No premiums means no bill. No bill means most people never know that they’ve been enrolled in a plan that you and I are paying for with our taxpayer dollars. The only people who benefit are the fraudsters.”
Let that sink in: a million phantom or hijacked enrollments, zero-premium by design so the victims — and the taxpayers covering the tab — never notice a thing.
The stakes are enormous because of how the program is built. Washington covers the bulk of marketplace enrollees’ premiums through federal subsidies, so every fake or hijacked sign-up is a direct draw on the Treasury — a subsidy check cut for a person who may not even exist. Multiply that by a million, and the “glaring warning sign” Kennedy described starts to look like a very expensive blind spot.
The administration says it has already started cleaning house. Back in May, CMS moved to block the fraud at healthcare.gov and the marketplace call center, requiring agents to provide government-verified information, including Social Security numbers, before they get paid. Officials say they have already canceled thousands of fraudulent policies and are working with insurers to recover the money ahead of this fall’s open enrollment.
And the message to the agents gaming the system was blunt. “If you steal from the American taxpayer, or if you defraud American families, HHS will find you, and we will hold you accountable,” Kennedy said. Added Oz: “Do not walk away from us, run, because we are gonna find you.”
Source: pjmedia.com
