News Releases

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) responded to the release of two U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Inspector General (IG) reports on Obamacare verification systems. The first report reviews the effectiveness of the procedures and safeguards for preventing fraudulent or inaccurate information by applicants enrolling in health plans through the Obamacare insurance Exchanges. This report finds that the Obamacare system lacks internal controls to verify information provided by individuals enrolling through Obamacare. The second report details the inconsistencies that arose as part of the haphazard enrollment process. The IG finds that most exchanges were unable to resolve the majority of inconsistencies, most often relating to income and citizenship. In particular, the federal exchange was unable to resolve 2.6 million out of 2.9 million inconsistencies as of February 2014.

"The Administration has unilaterally changed Obamacare to bend every rule it can – delayed regulations, changed the enrollment period, and given select individual and employer exemptions – to try and make the law work," Sen. Moran said. "Once again, we are provided further evidence that Obamacare is not working. In fact, the Administration is relying on nothing more than the honor system to run a billion dollar program. Without adequate safeguards or the ability to reconcile inconsistencies in income and citizenship, the Administration is wasting millions in American taxpayers’ dollars to provide subsidies to individuals who do not actually qualify."

Without a process in place to verify an enrollee’s income or citizenship, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency responsible for implementing Obamacare, will continue to process applications based on nothing more than the honor system. As a result, the Administration will hand out inaccurate subsidies while relying on an unproven, incomplete back-end system to recoup incorrect subsidies during the tax filing process. This disorganization will result in massive uncertainty with the Administration having to dedicate more taxpayer dollars to reclaim the incorrect subsidies from enrollees who may not have the money to pay them back. In addition, many Americans who based their insurance choice off inaccurate subsidy information may now see their premiums increase as their subsidy is reduced by the Administration.

In May, Senator Moran demanded a response from the Department of Health and Human Services about a press report stating the federal government may be paying incorrect Obamacare subsidies to more than 1 million individuals.  The Department has yet to respond to the Senator’s letter.

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