Last Thursday Senator Rob Portman (R-OH), Chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI), spoke on Fox News America’s Newsroom with Martha MacCallum to discuss the recent findings by the Government Accountability Office on Obamacare fraud.
In 2014, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began an investigation into how the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) prevents fraud under the Affordable Care Act. The most disturbing result was of the 12 fictitious identities used to test identity and citizenship verification, 11 received coverage from the Health Insurance Marketplace.
These results cause concern for how the Department of Health and Human Services is appropriating their funds. The 2015 GAO report states that the fake applicants received a total of $30,000 in benefits. Even after the 2014 initial report, the HHS did not flag the applications as false documents.
Portman is taking on the investigation to ensure that the incident never happens again:
“We’re going to dig deep, and we’re going to find out how this could possibly have happened. But two, how can we fix it? The American people are frustrated by Obamacare for a lot of reasons, but one is this thing is so poorly administered… let’s be sure it’s working. It’s almost a trillion dollars that will be spent over the next 10 years, let’s make sure that money is well spent.”
In addition, the carelessness of investigators can cause an increased burden on taxpayers. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) employs contractors for many of their efforts including processing health insurance applications. The 2014 GAO documents states:
“According to CMS officials, its document processing contractor is not required under its contract to authenticate documentation or to conduct forensic analysis. Executives of the contractor concurred and told us the review standard the contractor uses is that it accepts documents as authentic unless there are obvious alterations.”
Portman isn’t the only Republican senator taking action against Obamacare fraud. Senator Orrin Hatch has echoed Portman’s concerns. As the Washington Examiner reported:
"A prominent senator wants answers about lax oversight of more than 700,000 Obamacare recipients who received $2.4 billion in tax credits and who may owe the federal government money."
The article goes on to explain Obamacare recipients can receive a tax credit based on income. In order to receive an advance tax credit, recipients reports their income upon signing up. However, if recipients increase their pay through the year, they need to pay the difference. The major issue is:
"710,000 advance credit recipients haven’t sent in their tax returns and did not request extensions to file by the October deadline, according to the Internal Revenue Service."
It is clear that this system under Obamacare has failed. Since these GAO findings have been made public, the Republican Majority will continue working to fix the healthcare system and ensure that the American people’s taxpayer dollars are being properly spent.
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