Government Can’t Resolve Obamacare Inconsistencies

Recent reports have identified millions of “inconsistencies” regarding citizenship and residency status of those who enrolled in Obamacare. But according to the Washington Free Beacon, the government was able to resolve less than 1 percent of those irregularities, leaving almost 3 million unresolved.

According to the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) within the Health and Human Services Department, “The Federal marketplace was not able to resolve inconsistencies related to: citizenship, status as a national, lawful presence, residency, family size, annual household income, and whether the applicant was eligible for minimum essential coverage through employer-sponsored insurance.”

The Obama administration had advertised its 8 million Obamacare sign-ups in April, but only 67 percent of those enrollees had actually paid their premiums in April. This latest report from the OIG indicates that some of those 8 million enrollees may also not have been eligible.

The OIG looked at three exchanges: Healthcare.gov, Covered California and Access Health CT. All three exchanges, the report found, were ineffective at verifying eligibility. In a random sample of 45 applicants in each marketplace, the report found:

– Healthcare.gov did not validate a social security number in one application, and another application left the SSN line blank.
– In California, thirty applicants had conflicting application and eligibility data, which the state did not resolve in 19 cases. In 7 of 45 cases, California did not verify citizenship.
– Connecticut was unable to confirm the identity of applicants who enrolled over the phone.

According to the OIG report, “Residency was verified by the federal, California, and Connecticut marketplaces only by accepting applicants’ attestation of residency.” According to the report, “CMS stated that the marketplaces followed Federal requirements and there were not comprehensive, national electronic data sources for residency verification available to the federal marketplace.”

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