Free Republic

A recent "undercover enrollment" investigation conducted by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that pretty much anyone can sign up for Obamacare and receive taxpayer funded incentives without having to worry about pesky little details like proving citizenship, identity or income-based needs. In fact, the study found that every single one of its 15 fictitious Obamacare applications were actually approved for coverage despite intentional application omissions, fictitious identification and citizenship documentation, etc. Moreover, all of the applications were also approved for federal subsidies which totaled $60,000 per year. Per the GAO: Our undercover testing for the 2016 coverage year found...

After years of delays and failed launches, Obamacare has finally taken hold, and with it the economic and financial implications from this mandatory tax are finally being felt. We have extensively covered how Obama's Affordable Care Act will end up being a failure, observing both the economic implications in "In Latest Obamacare Fiasco, Most Low-Income Workers Can't Afford "Affordable Care Act" as well as its operational shortcomings in "Obamacare Is A Disaster: Co-Op Insurers Across America Are Collapsing, And Now There Is Fraud", paradoxically even as Obamacare - a tax - was according to the BEA the single biggest contributor...

Gannett, so link only: http://www.pressconnects.com/story/news/local/new-york/2015/10/29/dead-entolled-health-exchange/74807200/

Obamacare, depending on who you ask in the GOP, is either a calculated Trojan Horse designed to collapse and release single payer health care upon the American public, a flawed piece of legislation that needs badly to be revised, or the greatest evil inflicted on the American public since slavery. But what if it was something far simpler: namely, free money for Democrats? A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to congressional requesters provided to this author suggests that this explanation may, in fact, be the correct one. Buried in the document’s appendices is a stunning statistic. Out...

Senior Democrats pushed back Thursday against an undercover government probe of President Barack Obama’s health care law, saying it didn’t uncover any real fraud. Investigators for the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office signed up 11 bogus beneficiaries for 2014 coverage then got HealthCare.gov to continue benefits this year for all but one. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said these were “fictitious cases” and the GAO investigators themselves admit the findings can’t be translated to the 10 million people getting subsidized coverage through the law’s health insurance markets. Wyden spoke at a Finance Committee hearing on the investigation. But GAO’s audits chief Seto...

Perry Chiaramonte October 04, 2014 A Texas union’s dirty laundry -- aired out in court when workers charged they were cheated out of overtime pay – also shows the labor organization ripped off taxpayers under a $1.3 million contract to sign people up for ObamaCare, a watchdog group is claiming. Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a "navigator," enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage. The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in...

<p>Employees at an ObamaCare processing center in Missouri with a contract worth $1.2 billion are reportedly getting paid to do nothing but sit at their computers.</p> <p>“Their goals are set to process two applications per month and some people are not even able to do that,” a whistleblower told KMOV-TV, referring to employees hired to process paper applications for ObamaCare enrollees.</p>

Outgoing Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius is now refusing to testify before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies, a Senate aide told The Daily Caller Tuesday. Sebelius had originally been set to testify before the subcommittee about the department’s 2015 $70 billion budget request on April 2. According to another aide, however, several weeks after confirming the hearing date, she requested a date switch with the National Institutes of Health budget hearing on May 7. The committee accommodated her request. Now, after announcing her resignation on April 11, she is...

In the closing days of the open enrollment period for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) , the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was mailing out letters notifying certain Americans that they had already started a healthcare coverage application on their behalf. The HHS letter stated that the information they used to begin the application for individual Healthcare was obtain by the state agency in charge of implementing Obamacare. The next step for the individual would be visit Healthcare.gov and complete the already started application to see if they qualify for “Marketplace coverage.” News of the HHS letter...

One lawmaker has blown the whistle on deceptive reports sent to the federal government that allowed Oregon to get tens of millions of dollars from Washington for the project, allegedly including dummy web pages intended to fool HHS into believing that Cover Oregon development was on schedule. Let’s make sure to note that this doesn’t appear to be a very effective fraud, except when targeted at the truly ignorant. After all, an agency that’s certifying work for a state exchange should have the wherewithal to check the actual functionality. If a bunch of non-functioning web pages was enough to fool...

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has no system in place to prevent fraud when individuals apply for tax credits under Obamacare, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA). The IG said in an audit released Tuesday that the IRS has no plan to manage, monitor, or mitigate fraud risk when processing premium tax credits available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). “The ACA Program has not yet completed a fraud mitigation strategy,” the audit found. “It is important for the IRS to thoroughly consider fraud threats and risks that could impact new ACA systems.”

Rep. Jim McDermott on Wednesday downplayed a report from a Treasury Department watchdog that warned the government subsides that are supposed to help Americans purchase health care under the Affordable Care Act are vulnerable to fraud. Speaking on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal,” Mr. McDermott, Washington Democrat, said that he has not had time to read the audit, but said that it is no surprise that government programs are subject to fraud. “Medicare is subject to fraud. Taxpaying is subject to fraud. The IRS is subject to fraud, and what you do is as you discover things, you developed mechanisms to catch...

Reilly, who generally supports the law, said he'd always assumed skimpy plans wouldn't make the cut. But he didn't think major medical plans like his would go away, too. "That was a complete bombshell to me," he said. Florida's largest health insurer will give 300,000 customers who received cancellation notices the option to renew their existing plans for one more year. Florida Blue's decision comes in the wake of President Barack Obama's reversal on Thursday. Facing political pressure over the cancellations, Obama told insurers they could revive the plans for another year, even though they don't meet the requirements of...

On July 16 of this year, Sarah Kliff posted a prescient piece on the Washington Post’s Wonkblog. The post, “Meet Serco, the private firm getting $1.2 billion to process your Obamacare application,” reported that 90 percent of Serco’s U.S. business is with the federal government and that the 25-year-old firm pretty much owes its existence to government contracting. In this case, Serco won a contract that will pay it $114 million in 2013 and that eye-popping number of $1.2 billion over the next five years. According to one outside study, it’s the largest single contract for implementing the Affordable Care Act,...

To the list of problems plaguing President Obama’s health care law, add one more — fraud. With millions of Americans frustrated and bewildered by the trouble-prone federal website for health insurance, con men and unscrupulous marketers are seizing their chance. State and federal authorities report a rising number of consumer complaints, ranging from deceptive sales practices to identity theft, linked to the Affordable Care Act. Madeleine Mirzayans was fooled when a man posing as a government official knocked on her door. Barbara Miller and Maevis Ethan were pitched by telemarketers who claimed to work for Medicaid. And Buford Price was...

More than 700 websites have been created with names playing off of Obamacare or Healthcare.gov, making it likely that some Americans will mistakenly hand over private information to unknown third-parties. For instance, there is a website — www.obama-care.us — that brands itself as part of the "Obamacare enrollment team," directs people to an "Obamacare enrollment form" and asks users for their name, address, Social Security number and other contact information. According to a counter at the bottom of the page, more than 3,000 people have visited obama-care.us. This website does not actually enable people to enroll in Obamacare. It was...

President Obama’s Democratic allies in Congress said Wednesday they are “not happy” about the glitch-filled rollout of the healthcare law, but criticized Republicans for trying to kill Obamacare rather than fix it. “It’s very disturbing to see that the website hasn't performed as well as we would like,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), the No. 4 Democrat in the House, emerging from a private briefing with administration officials. “I think it's even more disturbing when individuals intentionally work against the American people and the rights that they have now secured to access quality, affordable health care.” “It's also not just...

Robert Laszewski is president of Health Policy and Strategy Associates, a policy and marketplace consulting firm that has him working closely with many in the heath industry as they try to navigate the Affordable Care Act, as well as the author of the excellent Health Care Policy and Marketplace Review blog. As such, he has a unique view on how the rollout looks from the industry side. We spoke on Wednesday. A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows. Ezra Klein: We last talked about 10 days ago. So in the interim, what are your insurance industry sources saying has...

Crammed into conference rooms with pizza for dinner, some programmers building the Obama administration’s showcase health insurance website were growing increasingly stressed. Some worked past 10 p.m., energy drinks in hand. Others rewrote computer code over and over to meet what they considered last-minute requests for changes from the government or other contractors. As questions mount over the website’s failure, insider interviews and a review of technical specifications by The Associated Press found a mind-numbingly complex system put together by harried programmers who pushed out a final product that congressional investigators said was tested by the government and not private...

Some Republicans, including Sen. Ted Cruz, have argued that if ObamaCare goes through, an entire group of people will want and like the services offered, thus creating a new dependent culture of people hooked on the supposedly universal and free medical care being offered. Hence, any chances of repealing or reversing it in the future will be doomed. The events of the previous week have shown that this is an unfounded fear. More likely is that the inherent flaws in ObamCare, now more apparent than ever, will create a groundswell of public opinion demanding either its delay or a movement...