OBAMACARE FRAUD: Round and Round It Goes
Do you have a budget for your business? What about your household finances? Do you know how much money is coming in and going out of your office or your home each year? Does it balance? And does it matter?
Let me ask it another way: how much do you pay in taxes every year—and do you care?
The current U.S. national debt is $38 trillion (and if you’re reading this after December 2025, it’s significantly higher). The human mind cannot truly comprehend a number that large. Yet every year, trillions of dollars move through Washington, DC. Given that reality, it’s no surprise our government is fertile ground for fraud.
A U.S. senator from the 1960s, Everett Dirksen, reportedly (though never definitively confirmed) said: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.” Truer words have never been spoken—and the problem persists. Every decade or so, it seems our representatives create new programs that are ripe for abuse.
Such is the case with the Affordable Care Act, lovingly known as Obamacare.
Recently, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a damning report detailing widespread fraud related to Obamacare subsidies.
On December 8, 2025, the House Committee held a hearing titled “Fighting Obamacare Subsidy Fraud.” Testimony was provided by representatives from the GAO, Paragon Health Institute, and Dr. Ge Bai of the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. What they revealed should alarm every taxpayer.
Here are just a few of the findings from the GAO report and House testimony:
- In 2014, the first year of the program, subsidy payments totaled $20 billion. By 2025, that figure had ballooned to $130 billion.
- In 2025, 6.4 million people were improperly enrolled in fully subsidized plans.
- 19,000 times, Social Security numbers belonging to deceased individuals were used to obtain subsidies—costing taxpayers $94 million.
- 68,000 Social Security numbers were used in multiple plans in 2024.
- In 2025, the GAO submitted 20 fake applications using fake Social Security numbers; 19 of the 20 were approved and received subsidies—and those accounts remain active.
- 40% of fully subsidized plans had zero claims, meaning they were never used at all.
- 45% of subsidized plans were automatically re-enrolled.
- In 2024, 160,000 applications were altered by insurance brokers without the enrollee’s authorization, allowing brokers to collect fees.
- Paragon Health estimates Obamacare fraud will cost taxpayers $27 billion in 2025 alone.
Surely, one would assume government agencies are addressing this fraud aggressively. Surely arrests are being made and bad actors removed.
We could only dream.
According to the GAO and Paragon Health, 850 insurance brokers were removed from the program for fraudulent activity—only to have all 850 reinstated, allowed to sell insurance plans again. To date, only four individuals have gone to jail for Obamacare-related fraud.
As Dr. Bai stated in her testimony, there is “no incentive to stop the fraud.”
The GAO concluded its report by noting that “fraud risks persist since first reported in 2016”, and that CMS has not meaningfully updated its fraud risk assessments since 2018. As a result, the fraud continues, with one in four enrollees improperly enrolled in Obamacare plans.
Meanwhile, Obamacare premiums continue to rise twice as fast as employer-sponsored insurance—129% versus 68%.
So who wins?
Insurance companies.
Corrupt brokers.
And some members of Congress.
Round and round it goes.
Who loses?
Patients who truly need coverage.
Everyone who relies on insurance as premiums skyrocket.
And, of course, taxpayers.
Why can’t the government regulate itself?
Why can’t it stop this fraud?
Why are massive programs created with virtually no checks and balances?
Do they care?
And it is against this fraudulent backdrop that many continue to advocate for full government control of healthcare.
Lord help us.
