A Government Accountability Office investigation that revealed
the presence of fraud in the Obamacare enrollment system confirmed the way HealthCare.gov exchanges work is "not being monitored," Sen. Rob Portman said Thursday.
"It confirmed what we feared," the Ohio Republican told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program.
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This week, the GAO found that 11 counterfeit characters that its investigators created last year were automatically re-enrolled by HealthCare.gov, and ended up getting to keep the coverage they already had.
Five were knocked out of the system, but then were reapplied and were able to come back in, noted Portman.
"One thing they also found out is so many legitimate taxpayers are so confused they are ending up getting their refunds cut," said Portman. "Two-thirds of the people getting the subsidies are experiencing this. The IRS says half of the people are having their tax bills coming to the door or getting the refunds cut. It's really confusing to the taxpayers, and there is a lot of fraud."
Johnson said there will be congressional hearings about the report at which lawmakers will try to figure out how the fraud happened and how to fix the problem.
"The American people are frustrated by Obamacare for a lot of reasons," said Johnson, noting the exchanges are poorly administers.
Johnson said he does not agree with the recent Supreme Court ruling that backed the federal exchanges, but now that it happened "let's be sure it's working. It's almost a trillion dollars that will be spent over the next 10 years. Let's make sure that is well spent."
There is also a problem with accountability in the Obamacare system, said Johnson, and lawmakers are having trouble getting information from the Department of Health and Human Services.
"We'll do what we have to do to get it," he said. "But this should be something where we have total transparency, where the American people are able to ensure the money is going to the right people, and to ensure people playing by the rules, trying to do the right thing and not so confused...let's be sure we get it right."
Johnson said HHS has said it is not giving the information lawmakers need because "we are asking for too much...it's delay, delay, delay. We'll get to the bottom of it."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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