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Dr. Mehmet Oz, administrator for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, is urging health insurers to work only with brokers who record their conversations with Obamacare applicants, escalating the Trump administration’s crackdown on unauthorized enrollments that officials say have cost taxpayers billions.
Vice President JD Vance announced Tuesday that the administration’s anti-fraud task force will be removing 750,000 fraudulent recipients enrolled in Obamacare, saying the move will save American taxpayers $2.2 billion.
“These [Obamacare enrollees] are phantom accounts,” Oz told Fox News Digital. “There are no human beings involved in these accounts.
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He continued, “Why do I think that? We reached out to them. We wanted to know, have you filed any claims? We don’t see anything. Have you ever responded to any questions we’ve asked you? Do you have a Social Security number? Without that, I can’t tell if you made enough money to be on Obamacare or maybe too much to be.”
Oz told Fox News Digital that the administration is encouraging health insurance companies to get involved in the anti-fraud push.
“From now on, we’re asking insurance companies to work with brokers who record the conversations,” Oz said.
“Why wouldn’t you?” he said. “What are you nervous about? What are you worried about? Why don’t you want me to hear what you discussed?”
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The move would help create transparency among the recipients who are applying to receive aid through Obamacare, ideally showing that the customer authorizing the transaction is verifiable and actually qualifies for the program.
“I’m trying to make sure you had a real discussion to explain the policies and truly tried your best to get the right people in the right programs,” Oz said about the administration’s proposal. “Otherwise, we have massive corporate fraud.”
Oz also told Fox News Digital the administration discovered 1.1 million people receiving benefits from Obamacare that did not have a Social Security number.
“The 760,000 accounts that we terminated, we took out because the American taxpayers should not be paying fraudulent brokers to lie about people who don’t exist, collect premiums and run away with the money,” Oz said.
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The Treasury Department has begun handing out refund checks of $500 to roughly 1 million Americans, along with a letter from President Donald Trump slamming the Biden administration for overcharging taxpayers “to fund the operation of HealthCare.gov.”
“I don’t know what’s driving this desire to hurt our ability to regulate,” Oz said.
“But I can tell you, for sure, we have other tricks up our sleeve to make sure we don’t let the American people get taken advantage of.”
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