Vice President JD Vance announced Tuesday that his White House Fraud Task Force will be removing 750,000 fraudulent Obamacare recipients from the program in an effort he says will save U.S. taxpayers $2.2 billion.
Additionally, the administration will be employing additional verification for another 419,000 people.
“We’re going to make sure that they are, first of all, legal residents of the United States of America, and second of all, we’re going to make sure that they actually meet the income threshold requirements in order to receive these Obamacare benefits,” Vance said.
“To put into context the amount of money that we’re stopping from going to fraudsters today, $2.2 billion, the average American child receives about $4,000 in health care benefits every single year. That means that we are saving 550,000 American children’s worth of healthcare that was going to fraudsters and now will go to the essential services for which it was meant to go.”
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Vance criticized the administration of former President Joe Biden for incentivizing Obamacare fraud, arguing that the administration’s incentives for brokers to enroll people in the program, combined with relaxed eligibility for the program, became the perfect recipe for rampant fraud.
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“In one case we found a fraud ring that had 40 agents, 40 brokerage agents who had funneled 50,000 people into the Obamacare system fraudulently. Now, some of those people were probably legitimate. Most of those people were not eligible (because) either they didn’t meet the citizenship or the income requirements. Many of those people quite literally didn’t even exist.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and a member of Vance’s Fraud Task Force, further expanded on the non-existent individuals fraudulently entered into Obamacare.
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“Normally 1%, a single digit, 1% of people who get Obamacare exchange plans do not have a Social Security number,” Oz said.
“We’re supposed to check their tax returns to make sure they’re making between one and four times the poverty level, so they’re eligible for all of our taxpayers to pay their insurance so they get the discount. Now, if 100% of people coming on the program don’t have Social Security numbers, I think we’d all agree there’s a problem,” he continued.
Oz then revealed that over 1.1 million people who enrolled in Obamacare this year had no Social Security numbers. He also revealed that 35% of enrollees have never used the program.
“They haven’t bought a prescription medication. They haven’t seen a doctor. That’s just not possible. That’s at least twice as much as your normal incidence of people having insurance and not using it. So, we know there is fraud,” he added.
He then detailed the case of convicted fraudster Cory Lloyd, who he said has “a very punchable face.”
Lloyd and his partner, Stephen Strong, preyed on vulnerable consumers to enroll them in Obamacare in a scheme to collect commission payments from insurance companies, according a February announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ).
“These crooks bribed homeless and jobless people into enrolling in the ACA plans. They had no idea what they were doing,” Oz said.
Oz read text messages between Lloyd and Strong in which the pair schemed to enroll people who had lost their homes from hurricanes in Florida.
“This is the text message. This is … I can’t even say these words on television. But Lloyd said ‘it’s a killer idea to sign up these poor individuals, make them victims. If it could pull it off. I want to rape the shelters.’ And then Strong said, ‘ha ha, not kidding. And then Lloyd said ‘me either. Let’s ef ’em up,'” Oz relayed.
The pair were both convicted of one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud, three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to defraud the United States, according to the DOJ. Strong was also convicted of two counts of money laundering. Both were sentenced to a total of 20 years in prison and ordered to pay $180.6 million in restitution, according to the DOJ announcement.
Fox News Digital contacted the DOJ and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for further comment.
