Summary
An influential conservative think tank is contending that 6.2 million enrollees on the Affordable Care Act’s health insurance exchanges — roughly a quarter of all enrollees — improperly received health coverage this year through the program.
Paragon Health Institute, which is led by a former economic aide to President Donald Trump and has influenced the current administration’s health policy moves, also argues that the federal government could wrongly subsidize the ACA program by $25 billion this year. The organization bases its latest analysis on publicly available enrollment and Census Bureau data, arguing that it is impossible for so many people to qualify for subsidies to purchase ACA coverage given their reported income levels.
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“Obamacare enrollment over the last few years has been inflated by improper and phantom enrollees, and those enrollees are expensive to the taxpayer,” Brian Blase, Paragon’s founder, said in an interview. He pointed to states across the South, such as Florida and Texas, as places where the alleged fraud was concentrated, saying that were too few controls on people signing up for the program.
“The problem is more severe in states that did not expand Medicaid, because in those states there’s incentives to overestimate income and claim a subsidy,” Blase said.