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A blistering new Government Accountability Office review has laid bare what hardworking Americans already feared: our Obamacare subsidy system is a walking invitation for fraud, and federal auditors could enroll fake people and trigger taxpayer-funded subsidies with alarming ease. The GAO’s undercover testing for recent coverage years found persistent weaknesses that allowed bogus enrollments to slip through, and the political fallout is already boiling over in Washington. This is not a minor bookkeeping error — it is systematic failure, and leaders must stop treating it like business as usual.
The GAO’s testing showed fraudulent or fictitious applicants received subsidies worth thousands of dollars a month, and auditors were able to get coverage for fake identities in both 2024 and 2025 with little to no verification. Reporters uncovered examples where only a handful of phony applicants produced subsidies that added up to more than ten thousand dollars a month, exposing how much waste can be piled on the backs of taxpayers when the system is so porous. If the government can be gamed this easily, there is a direct cost to every family paying premiums and every American paying federal taxes.
What makes this outrage even more damning is that the GAO warned Congress about these same vulnerabilities nearly a decade ago — in 2016 the watchdog found markets approved every single one of its fictitious applications during testing. That history proves this is not a new problem; it is a recurring scandal born of inertia and political protection for a failed system. Conservatives who have been saying that more money without verification invites abuse were proven right, and now the rest of the country has to live with the bill.
The scope of identity misuse in the program is chilling: tens of thousands of Social Security numbers were linked to multiple enrollments, and one SSN alone showed up across well over a hundred policies — the equivalent of decades of coverage. Brokers and middlemen exploited call centers and lax checks to enroll people without proper documentation, creating a cottage industry of fraud at taxpayers’ expense. This is criminal behavior, and the politicians who created the incentives — and those who looked the other way — must be held accountable.
Republican lawmakers are rightly furious and demanding answers and accountability, with House leaders calling the findings a “bombshell” that explains how billions can be squandered under the guise of compassion. Enough with warm words and press releases; if government employees, brokers, or outside actors committed fraud they should face prosecution, and any agency heads who ignored repeated warnings should be shown the door. The American people did not sign up to underwrite a fraud factory, and our leaders ought to stop pretending the status quo is acceptable.
There is a sober, practical path forward: Congress should refuse to extend or expand subsidies until meaningful fraud-prevention measures are in place, and regulators must implement hard verification fixes in the marketplace rules that CMS itself has acknowledged are necessary. Auditors and prosecutors need resources to pursue criminal cases, and policymakers should tie any future funding to ironclad identity and income validation so the checks stop becoming a rubber stamp. Americans deserve health policy that helps the needy without rewarding scammers and bureaucrats who enable them.
