Slashdot Mirror
Affordable Care Act Exchanges Fail To Detect Counterfeit Documentation (atr.org)
Tulsa_Time writes with this excerpt of an account from the (unapologetically partisan) Americans for Tax Reform about a report released by the Government Accountability Office in which "application and enrollment controls on the federal exchange and two state exchanges (California and Kentucky)" were investigated by supplying false information; in each case, the investigators were able to obtain and activate health insurance through the exchanges. A slice:
Ten fictitious applicants were created to test whether verification steps including validating an applicant's Social Security number, verifying citizenship, and verifying household income were completed properly. In order to test these controls, GAO's test applications provided fraudulent documentation: "For each of the 10 undercover applications where we obtained qualified health-plan coverage, the respective marketplace directed that our applicants submit supplementary documentation we provided counterfeit follow-up documentation, such as fictitious Social Security cards with impossible Social Security numbers, for all 10 undercover applications."
Anything government is a total mess. Today I needed a replacement SS card. no problem, fill out the SS 5 form found online and take it to the office with my ID. Sounds simple. Actually it was not.
1 the take a number sign in was out of papter. 12 minutes to wait for the paper to be replaced.
2 Wait 2 hours to be called. Run out and feed the parking meter.
3 Sent away because my drivers license is invalid ID. Why was it invalid? It is due for renual next month. It is not expired. Went in to start the renual. Was issued a temp paper while the replacement is mailed to me. I still have the original, but they punched a hole in it to invalidate it. If I didn't renew my license, it would still be valid until next month. Is there any higher level of incompentance other than fedral government? They can't take it not because it is expired, but because it is being renued. How stupid can the fedral government get.
Somehow I expect the same high livel of competance with health care. As long as I can afford it, I'm staying on a private plan. This scares me.
The truth shall set you free!
While true, you ignore the fact that they started skyrocketing long before Obamacare was passed.
OTOH, if you mean that the insurance companies should be cut out of the healthcare system, I agree completely. I'm in favor of free coverage for everyone without all the god-damn middlemen that have tripled the price. (And I mean that as in "God damned the sheep and they died.". Those insurance parasites should just drop dead...or at least be rapidly put on unemployment.)
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Why should it be illegal? If you want to buy insurance for someone that doesn't exist, that is fine with me.
Consider this scenario:
1) Create a pile of fake people.
2) Conspirator at insurance company gets them insurance.
3) Siphon money out of the company as commission bonuses.
If instead, you control the insurance company, then you can rake in the subsidies. Fake low income people, subsidized by Uncle Sugar, who never need medical care would be great for the bottom line.
No. Obamacare DOUBLED the rate of increase for plans. My state had respectable individual plans that could not be canceled. Except Obamacare caused them to be canceled. Now the decent replacement plans look like they're going to be canceled and nothing will be left but total crap.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.