Ron’s committee released a report showing that an estimated $750 million in Obamacare tax credits may have gone to illegal immigrants.
Illegal immigrants and individuals with unclear legal status wrongly benefited from up to $750 million in ObamaCare subsidies and the government is struggling to recoup the money, according to a new Senate report obtained by Fox News.
The report, produced by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, examined Affordable Care Act tax credits meant to defray the cost of insurance premiums. It found that as of June 2015, “the Administration awarded approximately $750 million in tax credits on behalf of individuals who were later determined to be ineligible because they failed to verify their citizenship, status as a national, or legal presence.”
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The Senate report, based on a review launched by committee Chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., derisively describes this approach as “pay and chase.”
In other words, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services pays credits and subsidies to the insurance companies on behalf of the applicants – and the feds then “chase” after any overpayments to ineligible people once they are discovered.
“This ‘pay and chase’ model has potentially cost taxpayers approximately $750 million,” the report says. The 500,000 individuals in question have been removed from coverage, according to the findings, as the government seeks to get the money back.
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A report conducted by Senate Republicans estimates the Obama administration gave about $750 million in Obamacare health insurance subsidies to illegal immigrants who aren’t eligible for them.
The report, released Monday by the Senate Homeland Security Committee, also says that while the IRS has implemented a plan to take back the government assistance, the plan is “ineffective and insufficient.”
Illegal immigrants aren’t eligible for health insurance subsidies provided to low-income Americans through President Obama’s healthcare law. But some still succeeded in collecting the government assistance, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which announced in June that it had ended coverage for about 423,000 consumers who had failed to produce “sufficient documentation on their citizenship or immigration status.”
Republicans on the Homeland Security Committee had been looking into the issue over the last year under the direction of Chairman Ron Johnson, R-Wis. The report, first reported by Fox News, also says that CMS failed to coordinate with the IRS on a plan to recoup the improper payments.