Victor Nava writes for the New York Post about the recent exposure of Obamacare subsidies’ flaws.
Affordable Care Act subsidies have been granted, without the required documentation, to 90% of fictitious applicants over the last two years, according to a damning government watchdog report released Wednesday.
The Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) preliminary findings of ongoing and covert testing of Obamacare found “fraud risks” in the federal ACA marketplace, specifically related to the healthcare program’s advance premium tax credit – a subsidy Democrats shut down the government over last month in a failed effort to extend the tax credit for three more years.
“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 government watchdog.
In plan year 2024, all four of GAO’s fake applicants received coverage with lower monthly premiums – thanks to $2,350 per month in Obamacare subsidies granted to insurers – despite not submitting “documentation to support Social Security numbers (SSN), citizenship, and reported income.”
The GAO upped the number of fake applicants to 20 in plan year 2025 and 18 still “remain actively covered as of September 2025.”
The subsidies that the 18 fake enrollees were approved for totaled “over $10,000 per month.”
Evidence of potential “misuse” of Social Security numbers, including dead people receiving coverage, was also discovered by the GAO.
In plan year 2023 alone, one Social Security number was used to receive subsidized insurance coverage “for over 26,000 days (over 71 years of coverage) across over 125 insurance policies.”
In 2024, 66,000 Social Security numbers were linked to more than a years’ worth of subsidized coverage.
GAO also compared Social Security numbers of the deceased to those that received tax credits and in 2023 and identified over 58,000 matches, including at least 7,000 people who died before coverage began. …
… Top Republican lawmakers described the report as the “smoking gun” proving their claims that Obamacare is “broken.”
