GOP cries fraud as ACA subsidies head to Senate
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First Things First
Before 17 House Republicans joined all voting Democrats this afternoon to extend the expired Affordable Care Act enhanced premium tax credits, GOP leadership intensified their claims that the program is rife with fraud in defense of their opposition to the subsidies.
But Democrats dismissed the attacks as a distraction from the Trump administration and the GOP’s lack of solutions to the affordability crisis and the latest example of Republicans resorting to assertions of wasteful spending whenever they’re on the wrong side of a policy debate.
“Republicans always go to waste, fraud and abuse when they are trying to provide an excuse not to do anything to actually make life better for the American people,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who led the discharge petition that forced a vote on the subsidies extension, told me this morning. “The reason that the One Big Ugly Bill is so unpopular is because they enacted the largest cut to Medicaid in American history. They did it to claim waste, fraud and abuse. And guess what? The American people aren’t buying it as it relates to Medicaid, and they certainly aren’t buying it as it relates to the Affordable Care Act.
Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the top Democrat on the committee with jurisdiction over the ACA subsidies, told me that if Republicans were serious about addressing fraud in the health care system, they would support his proposed anti-fraud legislation targeting insurance brokers.
“I wrote a bill that deals with the number-one issue,” Wyden added. “Not one of them signed on.”
Still, Speaker Mike Johnson’s office blasted Democrats ahead of the House ACA vote, arguing the program lacks basic verification safeguards and is a fraud cesspool backed up with recent Government Accountability Office findings that subsidies have flowed to fake identities, duplicate Social Security numbers, and deceased individuals.
The Louisiana Republican also pointed to Minnesota Medicaid fraud cases and rising federal costs as evidence that extending subsidies without reforms shifts financial risk onto taxpayers, contrasting Democrats’ approach with an alternative plan that passed the House last month, which GOP leaders say would stabilize markets, lower premiums, and restore accountability rather than an extension of the status quo.
