“ObamaCare really is a gift that keeps on giving – for insurers.”  Those are the words of The Wall Street Journal editorial board.

For months we’ve been hearing about the waste, fraud, and abuse of Medicaid and I’ve written extensively on that subject. (See recent archived articles.) But now we see that there’s another healthcare insurance program that is wasting taxpayers’ money.

ObamaCare was created when The Affordable Care Act was passed in 2010 by Democrats without a single Republican vote. It was implemented in 2014 and was intended to provide lower cost healthcare premiums to millions of Americans. President Obama promised at the time that this new healthcare system would save every American $2500 per year. This was one of several promises made by Obama that went unfulfilled.

The reality is that the cost of healthcare insurance has gone up for everyone who does not qualify for government subsidies. But the Biden administration increased the rolls of those with government subsidies in 2021 by lowering financial eligibility limits. The WSJ editors tell us enrollment has since doubled while taxpayer costs rose by 150%. Spending on ObamaCare subsidies has increased faster than Medicaid or Medicare since 2020 – if you can believe it. Democrats tout this blowout of government-subsidized healthcare as a triumph.

But here’s the really wild part: More than a third of all enrollees generated no medical claims last year, according to Paragon’s analysis. That includes 40% of those in plans that are fully subsidized. Between 2021 and 2024, the number of enrollees who didn’t use their health coverage more than tripled to 11.7 million from 3.5 million.

The Paragon Institute reports that taxpayers are subsidizing the insurance for nearly 12 million people who never use their coverage. As Paragon explains, tens of billions of dollars in subsidies for these 11.7 million enrollees “went to insurers and middlemen without funding a single medical service.” After individuals enroll in plans, the government pays monthly premium subsidies directly to the insurers. Even most healthy people have some sort of medical claim in a year. Why don’t these ObamaCare enrollees?

As Paragon earlier documented, insurance brokers have been fudging incomes of people in order to enroll them in government-subsidized plans for which they aren’t eligible, often without their knowledge. The Biden Administration facilitated such fraud by easing income verification and eligibility checks.

Paragon estimates that about 6.4 million people this year were improperly enrolled in exchange plans. The Justice Department has charged several brokers with enrolling consumers in ObamaCare plans for which they weren’t eligible in order to obtain commissions. In other words, insurance companies are stealing from the American taxpayer by falsifying income data in order to make ineligible people eligible for government subsidies.

What is being done about this?

This is why Republicans in their tax bill strengthened income verifications for ObamaCare plans. Democrats claim such measures will cause millions of people to lose coverage. But many of them don’t need or use their insurance. Many were ineligible for this coverage in the first place. Some are enrolled in employer plans or Medicaid. The subsidies pad the profits of insurers – at the expense of taxpayers.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services last month found that 1.6 million Americans each month last year were enrolled in both Medicaid and subsidized ObamaCare plans. Insurers might respond that they aren’t profiting from such phantom and duplicate enrollees because ObamaCare requires them to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on medical care. Democrats intended this rule as a de facto profit cap. But insurers have circumvented this by increasing payments to providers, pharmacies and middle-men they own.

WSJ editors say, “If insurers don’t benefit from the sweetened subsidies, why are they protesting their expiration at the end of this year? Insurers say their expiration could result in sicker risk pools. Their concern seems to be that reduced subsidies and the tax bill’s stricter income verifications will result in fewer phantom enrollees who don’t use their insurance. Forgive us for being old-fashioned, but why should taxpayers subsidize insurance for healthy people who don’t need or use it?”