While one might assume that the most enthusiastic proponents of extending the federal government’s assistance programs would also be the most ardent fraud hunters — since fraud weakens the system they promote — one would be wrong. When individual assistance and healthcare fraud actually receive effective scrutiny, socialists and progressives can reliably found among the chief protesters.
This is something to watch for, especially in light of what Vice President J. D. Vance announced yesterday — that the federal government has removed hundreds of thousands of Obamacare enrollments created for people who either do not meet eligibility requirements or . . . don’t exist.
“The action, initiated by the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” explains The Epoch Times, “targets 760,000 accounts and will save taxpayers an estimated $2.2 billion, according to federal officials.”
“We had a system in this country that rewarded brokers,” said the vice president, “that made people rich for enrolling fake people in programs that are meant to ensure that our fellow citizens have healthcare. This was a scandal.”
How did the task force determine ineligibility? These were the red flags: no payments received; no claims made.
Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, shared the stage with Vance, saying that lax enforcement allowed brokers to enroll people sans income verification or even Social Security numbers.
Which is why the administration also removed hundreds of brokers and agents likely to have “knowingly enrolled people who did not qualify or did not exist,” The Epoch Times clarifies.
Also imposed was a “six-month moratorium on the enrollment of new brokers.”
Obamacare seems to have had incentives for fraud built in. It’s a pity but perhaps not surprising that the advocates of such systems cannot be counted on to police those systems.
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4 replies on “Who’s Against Fraud?”
We observe an coälition de facto of persons of at least four sorts.
One sort is of simple grifters, seeking material gain.
Another sort is of sincere believers in the welfare state or in socialism, who want withheld any information that could bring redistribution into disrepute, but who aren’t quite of the next sort.
That next sort is of the Cloward-Pivenists; they want a more thorough-going socialism than the present welfare state and, to that end, want the welfare state to be overwhelmed by clients as swiftly as it might be. Present grift in their minds is good, so long as it does not provoke a backlash that causes the public to reject redistribution. So these folk too want information withheld.
And further sort is of political grifters</em, who seek the social advancement that comes from supporting these programmes in office, and who count upon the support-in-return of the grifters, of the Cloward-Pivenists, and of the useful idiots.
We observe an coälition de facto of persons of at least four sorts.
One sort is of simple grifters, seeking material gain.
Another sort is of sincere believers in the welfare state or in socialism, who want withheld any information that could bring redistribution into disrepute, but who aren’t quite of the next sort.
That next sort is of the Cloward-Pivenists; they want a more thorough-going socialism than the present welfare state and, to that end, want the welfare state to be overwhelmed by clients as swiftly as it might be. Present grift in their minds is good, so long as it does not provoke a backlash that causes the public to reject redistribution. So these folk too want information withheld.
And further sort is of political grifters, who seek the social advancement that comes from supporting these programmes in office, and who count upon the support-in-return of the grifters, of the Cloward-Pivenists, and of the useful idiots.
I’m against fraud.
However, “in light of what Vice President J. D. Vance announced yesterday,” I have to note that Vice President JD Vance and others in the Trump administration seem to habitually make shit up out of whole cloth that’s later found to be entirely, completely, and without exception false.
Not that previous administrations wouldn’t try to cleverly minimize/maximize things, fudge numbers, hide stuff, etc. They certainly did. But this administration seems to just say “ooh, this would sound good … let’s pretend we did it and see what people think.”
Isn’t it interesting that the people complaining loudest against fighting fraud are usually the people actually involved in it.
(allegedly)