Fighting Obamacare Subsidy Fraud: Is the Administrative Procedure Act Working as Intended?
House Subcommittee on Responsiveness and Accountability to Oversight
2025-12-10
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Source: Congress.gov
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Subcommittee will come to order without objection. The chair is authorized to declare a recess at any time. We welcome everyone to today's hearing. Thank you so much for being here. I know it's been a little unsettling, a little crazy in New Jersey vernacular, but it is what it is. And we do appreciate your time and your presence. I now recognize Dr. Ronder to lead us in the pledge of allegiance. And then I ask we remain standing for a moment of silence.
I will now recognize myself for an opening statement. Today, this committee examines a serious question that affects millions of average everyday Americans every single day. Has the Affordable Care Act, as written and as implemented, allowed waste, fraud, and abuse to flourish, while real American families are left to struggle under a system that was supposed to protect them? This is about real people, real families in every district and every state in this great country. Good families who work hard, play by the rules, and yet are still getting crushed by a system that was supposed to help and protect them. It's not fair. It's wrong. And frankly, it's disgusting. The people have done nothing wrong, but politicians have let them down. And that is the real reason we're here. We're not here, and I almost feel like saying this, I hope I don't have to say it over and over again. We're not here to debate what a new healthcare plan may look like. That is under another committee's jurisdiction. We are not here to entertain scare tactics about stripping health care away. I really do believe no Republican wants to do that. So let me say up front to my colleagues on the other side, no one should pretend otherwise today. Today we are here to study at, look at, dig deep into, and understand particularly what my good friend, the chairman of the Committee of the Whole brought forward when he asked for a GAO investigation into this, the Government Accountability Office, totally nonpartisan. So we shouldn't distract. We shouldn't dodge, we shouldn't run from what this nonpartisan GAO investigation uncovered. Every time someone tries to change the subject, it sends a message to the American people that defending the current corrupt ACA matters more than defending the families being hurt by it.
The worst thing that we could do is pretend the system is working simply because people rely on it. We shouldn't pretend. Yes, people rely on it, but it's not good. People rely on it because they have no other choice very often. We're here to examine the failures of the system that exists right now and right here. And right now, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has revealed the ugly, ugly truth. They tested the ACA, and the ACA failed. The GAO created fake applicants, get this, they created fake applicants using fictitious identities, missing documents, and questionable personal information. The system approved them all anyway. These imaginary enrollees received tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars month after month, even though they didn't exist. No verified identity, no proof of citizenship, no income documentation, nothing. Nothing at all. Think about this. This was not a partisan Republican stunt. This was the nonpartisan government accountability office. Tens of thousands of your hard-earned tax dollars went, sent to identities invented out of thin air. Fraud doesn't just waste tax dollars, it drives premiums higher for good, honest Americans. This is a program that paid out roughly $124 billion last year. That's a big number. If even a small fraction of that is tied to fraud or improper use, that is a huge number.
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