Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Because of *course* they did

A few months back, we reported on how easy it seemed to be to enroll fake people in the Federal Exchange:

"[F]ederal watchdog office did set up 10 phony insurance coverage accounts with no pushback from those overseeing the applications."

Which was in fact a marked improvement from the previous time we'd looked.

But time marches on, and now that Phase 1 of this year's Open Enrollment season is past, things have improved, right?

Um....

"Healthcare.gov and its state marketplaces approved health care coverage and subsidies for nine fake applicants in another Government Accountability Office sting"

Which is actually not so bad, when one considers that ObamaPlans are themselves pretty much fake insurance. Now, nine "people" out of the (presumably) tens of thousands who signed up doesn't seem like a lot, but here's the rub: that's just the ones we know about because they were essentially a controlled experiment undertaken by the Feds themselves.

How many others were enrolled for less honorable reasons we'll likely never know, but it seems unlikely that there aren't at least some. So what's the big deal? Isn't this basically a victimless crime? Not really: how many providers will be duped into performing services for which they'll never get paid, since the insured doesn't actually exist?

Well?
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