Oh Noes: Trump Threatens Entire US Healthcare System

Seriously, this headline from the UK Guardian is reminiscent of wacko full moonbat bloggers during the Buuuuuuush admin (if they could even write his name, it was often like *ush), utterly hyperventilating, not a high end news outlet (which does admit they are leftists)

In latest blow to Obamacare, Trump is threatening the entire US health system

The Trump administration is removing 760,000 people enrolled in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace on allegations of fraud, officials said on Tuesday – adding to previous efforts to chip away at federally subsidized insurance programs and likely causing some of the lowest-income Americans to forego healthcare, experts said.

The US government is also investigating about 420,000 people whom they suspect of fraud, and they are putting a six-month enrollment moratorium on new agents and brokers selling Obamacare policies, officials said at a press conference.

The removed enrollees are a mixture of “phantoms” and “ghosts” as well as people who don’t meet the eligibility requirements of Obamacare, said Mehmet Oz, the administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

Um, yeah, looks like they shouldn’t be on Ocare, and fraud means money diverted from people who actually need it. But, apparently, this is Bad in Liberal World.

“These are not real people,” he said, claiming that expelling them from the ACA marketplace would save the federal government $2.2bn.

That could go a long way towards helping real people, right? Oh, wait, sorry, Orange Man Bad.

“There’s no transparency about who these people are and why they’re being disenrolled, but I think it’s a reasonable concern that some number are being disenrolled inappropriately,” said Edwin Park, a research professor at the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy. “A common theme here is to make it incredibly burdensome for individuals to enroll and stay enrolled in their health coverage.”

He has zero proof, but, hey, why not give him time because Orange Man Bad.

Officials followed an unusual path to verify ACA enrollment, experts said. The administration sent to insurers a list of more than a million people suspected of being fraudulently enrolled in the ACA marketplace, also known as Obamacare. Officials said on Tuesday that they used AI tools to identify the enrollees.

The people were identified by three factors: they’d been enrolled by a broker or agent, had all of their ACA premium paid by the tax credit, and they had not supplied social security numbers or immigration documents.

Um, aliens, legal or not, are not supposed to get Ocare.

These disenrollments are happening in the context of major cuts to the marketplace. Premiums skyrocketed, doubling or tripling for some enrollees, after Republicans opposed extending the enhanced tax credits at the end of last year. Alongside other financial pressures, like higher energy and food costs, “there’s going to be an increasing number of people who can no longer afford their share of the premium”, Park said.

So, what you’re saying is that Ocare failed to bend the curve, and, in fact, increased costs all around? Huh. Sorry, Orange Man Bad.