{"id":2457,"date":"2026-06-02T11:08:44","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:08:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=2457"},"modified":"2026-06-02T11:08:44","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:08:44","slug":"conservative-group-alleges-6-million-were-fraudulently-enrolled-in-aca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=2457","title":{"rendered":"Conservative group alleges 6 million were fraudulently enrolled in ACA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paragon Health Institute, influential among Trump officials, urges a crackdown on Obamacare insurance markets.<\/strong><\/p>

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\"\"<\/figure>\n\n
The U.S. Affordable Care Act health insurance website healthcare.gov. (Patrick Sison\/AP)<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n

An influential conservative think tank is contending that 6.2 million enrollees on the Affordable Care Act\u2019s health insurance exchanges \u2014 roughly a quarter of all enrollees \u2014 improperly received health coverage this year through the program.<\/p>\n

Paragon Health Institute, which is led by a former economic aide to President Donald Trump and has influenced the current administration\u2019s health policy moves, also argues that the federal government could <\/b>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.<\/p>\n

The analysis, which Paragon plans to publicly release Wednesday and is likely to be sharply disputed by Democrats and other policy groups, is the latest salvo in the political fight over health insurance coverage, an issue that has helped decide past elections<\/a> and could play a role in this fall\u2019s midterms.<\/p>\n

Trump has also spent years demeaning Obamacare, insisting that the program \u2014 the signature domestic accomplishment of President Barack Obama \u2014 is a source of government overreach and fraud. ACA enrollment, which shot up under President Joe Biden, has shrunk by more than 1 million people since Trump took office and is expected to fall by millions more this year<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Democrats and some health policy experts have argued that Trump\u2019s polices, including ending covid-era subsidies<\/a> that widely lowered the cost of ACA coverage, have forced people off the program and put them at risk of losing access to health care services. Republicans contend that the ACA\u2019s dwindling enrollment is the result of necessary initiatives to cut waste and fraud after Democrats focused on growing the program but did too little to scrutinize who was signing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cObamacare enrollment over the last few years has been inflated by improper and phantom enrollees, and those enrollees are expensive to the taxpayer,\u201d Brian Blase, Paragon\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe problem is more severe in states that did not expand Medicaid, because in those states there\u2019s incentives to overestimate income and claim a subsidy,\u201d Blase said.<\/p>\n

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the program, estimated that up to 4.4 million enrollments in 2024 may have been improper, a spokesperson told The Washington Post.<\/p>\n

Democrats and some health policy analysts have said that Paragon\u2019s past allegations about ACA enrollment fraud were inflated. A federal judge appointed by Biden threw<\/a> out a federal health insurance rule drawing on Paragon\u2019s analysis, calling it flawed.<\/p>\n

Experts have also warned that the Trump administration\u2019s push to crack down on waste and fraud is having deleterious effects on the social safety net.<\/p>\n

\u201cCertain administration officials are throwing around the term \u2018fraud\u2019 as a way to justify policies that make it more difficult for eligible<\/i> people to apply for and maintain their insurance coverage,\u201d Sabrina Corlette, a professor at Georgetown University\u2019s Center on Health Insurance Reforms, wrote in an email. \u201cThat\u2019s essentially like trying to solve a rash of car thefts by making it more difficult for people to buy cars.\u201d<\/p>

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But Paragon\u2019s work has sparked GOP-led probes<\/a> in Congress and empowered Republicans eager to defend the party\u2019s health policy agenda ahead of this year\u2019s midterm elections. Several former Paragon staffers serve as senior economic and health officials in the Trump administration.<\/p>\n

Trump on Monday nominated Ge Bai, a Johns Hopkins University accounting professor and past Paragon adviser, to serve as an assistant secretary at the Department of Health and Human Services.<\/p>\n

The White House\u2019s new fraud task force is also planning to investigate ACA enrollment fraud among its potential targets, administration officials told The Post.<\/p>\n

Some Democrats critical of Paragon\u2019s findings have conceded that there are bad actors seeking to profit from the ACA marketplaces, such as brokers who wrongly sign up people for plans they don\u2019t need.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is clear evidence that, in 2024, rogue brokers improperly enrolled or switched the enrollment of a few hundred thousand people without their permission,\u201d Jason Levitis, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and a former Obama policy official, testified<\/a> to the Senate Finance Committee in November.<\/p>\n

The Government Accountability Office in December released a report<\/a> that also concluded the ACA faces persistent fraud risks. \u201cFor example, we were able to get subsidized insurance for fake enrollees,\u201d GAO wrote.<\/p>\n

CMS has cited Paragon\u2019s work when issuing<\/a> new, more restrictive eligibility rules for ACA enrollment. CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz praised the organization\u2019s \u201cpioneering work\u201d in an interview with Blase in April, with the former surgeon saying that he agreed with Paragon that there was \u201cmassive fraud\u201d in the ACA program and significant changes were needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like using a scalpel, but there are some times you have to use a meat cleaver because the whole system is in such shock that you need to be able to fix it,\u201d Oz said.<\/p>\n

Blase credited the Trump administration for taking steps, such as focusing on program integrity measures and removing duplicate enrollees, that he said had already worked to root out fraudulent sign-ups.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Trump administration has come in and is trying to clean up some of the obvious stuff,\u201d Blase said. He recommended that Congress take additional actions such as requiring a \u201cminimum premium payment\u201d that would quickly identify fictitious enrollees.<\/p>

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A conservative think tank says 6.2 million enrollees on the Affordable Care Act\u2019s health insurance exchanges improperly received health coverage this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":97,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2457","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interesting"],"yoast_head":"\nConservative group alleges 6 million were fraudulently enrolled in ACA - Moving Insider USA<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/movinginsiderusa.com\/?p=2457\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Conservative group alleges 6 million were fraudulently enrolled in ACA - 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