“Obamacare’s web exchanges are “vulnerable to fraud,” according to a watchdog report Monday that says government investigators were able to get taxpayer-subsidized coverage for fake enrollees despite a brand-new safeguard against chicanery on the law’s insurance exchanges.
The Government Accountability Office said six fictitious applicants who were able to obtain private coverage and subsidies under the Affordable Care Act during its testing in 2014 were successful again in 2016, even though none of the “enrollees” had filed a 2014 tax return.”
“The GAO said that after a payment-processing error booted two of its fake enrollees, four of them were able to retain coverage — two filed paper forms that didn’t ask about the 2014 return, and two lied and said they’d filed returns.
The GAO said one of its lying customers had to verbally reassure a marketplace representative and then received a warning in May about filing a 2014 return, though coverage remained in place as of August.
“Our undercover testing for the 2016 coverage year found that the eligibility determination and enrollment processes of the federal and state marketplaces we reviewed remain vulnerable to fraud, as we previously reported for the 2014 and 2015 coverage years,” the GAO said.” - GAO: Obamacare exchanges still vulnerable to fraud, Investigators able to sneak fake enrollees by safeguards, Washington Times, 09/12/2016
Link to entire article appears below:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/sep/12/gao-obamacare-exchanges-still-vulnerable-fraud/
'The federal government and the states have no idea what happened to billions of dollars given to create Obamacare's exchanges, according to a federal watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office charged the Obama administration and many state-run healthcare exchanges with not adequately tracking federal funding, according to a report in the libertarian Reason magazine on Monday.
The GAO report, which is still in draft form, comes as the administration is taking heat for not properly screening fake Obamacare applications.
The watchdog's latest finding focuses on grant funding for state-run healthcare exchanges with not adequately tracking federal funding, according to a report in the libertarian Reason magazine on Monday.
The GAO report, which is still in draft form, comes as the administration is taking heat for not properly screening fake Obamacare applications.
The watchdog's latest finding focuses on grant funding for state-run marketplaces from September 2010 to March 2015, Reason reported.
Neither the states examined by the GAO nor the administration detailed how grant funding for information-technology projects was spent.
Also, the states and the administration didn't track how much of $2.78 billion in Medicaid matching funds was used to fund exchange operations or development, according to Reason, which did not name the states implicated in the draft report.
The draft report appears to lay the blame on the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which manages Obamacare.
"Rather than require states to report spending on specific products, CMS required states running their own exchanges to report spending on five general categories — IT contracts, IT consultants, IT personnel, IT equipment and IT supplies," Reason's report said. "The vast majority of the grant money went to contracts for services like 'systems integration, project management, and independent validation and verifications.'" ' - Where did billions in Obamacare grants go? washingtonexaminer.com, 07/20/2015
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/where-did-billions-in-obamacare-grants-go/article/2568625
“WASHINGTON (AP) — Phony applicants that investigators signed up last year under President Barack Obama's health care law got automatically re-enrolled for 2015. Some were rewarded with even bigger taxpayer subsidies for their insurance premiums, a congressional probe has found.
The nonpartisan Government Accountability Office says 11 counterfeit characters that its investigators created last year were automatically re-enrolled by HealthCare.gov. In Obama's terms, they got to keep the coverage they had.
Six of those later were flagged and sent termination notices. But GAO said it was able to get five of them reinstated, using more bogus information. The five even got their monthly subsidies bumped up a bit. The case of the sixth fake enrollee was under review.
HealthCare.gov does not appear to be set up to detect fraud, GAO audits and investigations chief Seto Bagdoyan said in prepared testimony for a Senate Finance Committee hearing Thursday. A copy was provided to The Associated Press.” - Bogus ACA Enrollees Had Their Coverage Renewed, 07/15/2015, insurancenewsnet.com,
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/2015/07/15/apnewsbreak-bogus-enrollees-kept-getting-obamacare.html
‘HealthCare.gov has continuing security frailties that put users' sensitive personal information at risk, a government watchdog is set to tell Congress this week.
Despite the federal government's efforts to protect the website from breaches, "weaknesses remained in the security and privacy protections applied to HealthCare.gov and its supporting systems," said the Government Accountability Office.
The agency released a report Tuesday on the security of the site, through which millions of Americans bought coverage under the health law last year and which millions more will be urged to use.
"Until these weaknesses are fully addressed, increased and unnecessary risks remain of unauthorized access, disclosure, or modification of the information collected and maintained by Healthcare.gov and related systems, and the disruption of service provided by the systems," according to the GAO report, published ahead of testimony to be given at a Thursday hearing of the Republican-led House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.
The warnings come two weeks after the Department of Health and Human Services disclosed that a hacker had broken into part of the site and uploaded malicious software during the summer.’
‘GAO said the CMS failed to ensure system-security plans were complete and was relying on a draft data-use agreement with a contractor tasked with verifying users' identities.
Moreover, the agency skipped some assessments of privacy risks and didn't perform comprehensive security testing of the HealthCare.gov system that used all of the security controls specified by the government ahead of the site's launch. Testing remained incomplete as of June 2014, GAO said.
The agency also hadn't set up an alternate processing site for HealthCare.gov systems that would allow them to be recovered in the event of a disruption, the watchdog found.
Other weaknesses included lax enforcement of password-strength requirements and inconsistent application of security patches to the system.
Certain systems supporting the site's infrastructure weren't restricted from accessing the Internet, which increased the risk that unauthorized users could get to data.
Moreover, one of the federal agency's contractors hadn't properly secured its administrative network, which could allow unauthorized access to the HealthCare.gov system.
Many of the problems stemmed from the agency's disagreements about security roles and responsibilities with the various contractors, states and federal agencies that exchange information as part of the HealthCare.gov system, the watchdog said.’ - Federal Health Care Website Faces Security Risks, Watchdog Finds, WSJ, 09/16/2014
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://online.wsj.com/articles/federal-health-care-website-faces-security-risks-watchdog-finds-1410895828
Update 09/18/2014: Government Insider Warned of HealthCare.gov Security Risks: ‘I Am Tired of the Cover Ups’, dailysignal.com
http://dailysignal.com/2014/09/18/government-insider-warned-healthcare-gov-security-risks-tired-cover-ups/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=morningbell&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRons63JZKXonjHpfsX56OgvWa%2BylMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4DSMBlI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D
‘The House Ways and Means Oversight subcommittee held a hearing Wednesday about an undercover investigation by the GAO that found it was able to sign up 11 out of 12 fake applicants using false citizenship/immigration and income documents.
“The initial findings are deeply troubling to me,” said subcommittee Chairman Charles Boustany (R-La.). “We’re in an area, where tax credits are being utilized to undermine the program. … These kinds of situations are intolerable, whether you are a Republican or a Democratic.”’ - Ease of fake O-Care sign-ups worries GOP, thehill.com, 07/23/2014
Link to the entire article appears below:
http://thehill.com/regulation/healthcare/213112-ease-of-fake-o-care-sign-ups-worries-gop
