U.S. Vice President JD Vance, hailed by Trump as the “fraud czar,” announced on Tuesday (September 22) a sweeping investigation into the insurance marketplaces of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), commonly known as “Obamacare.” About 315,000 confirmed unauthorized enrollment records have been canceled, involving more than 760,000 people, with an estimated $2.2 billion in taxpayer subsidies recovered or avoided.
Vance noted that an average American child receives roughly $4,000 in medical benefits per year. By that calculation, the $2.2 billion swindled by fraud rings amounts to depriving 550,000 American children of the medical resources they should have enjoyed.
Vance also pointed the finger directly at former President Joe Biden’s administration, criticizing the previous government for drastically loosening eligibility checks in order to expand Obamacare coverage, and for designing distorted incentive mechanisms that allowed insurance brokers to easily profit — creating a perfect breeding ground for fraudsters.
Vance gave an example: investigators uncovered a criminal ring with 40 brokers that forced 50,000 people who did not meet citizenship and income requirements — including “fake identities that never existed at all” — into the Obamacare system.
In February this year, Florida insurance brokerage heads Cory Lloyd and Steven Strong were each sentenced by a federal court to 20 years in prison for their roles in a massive Obamacare subsidy fraud scheme. A Justice Department investigation found that the two specifically targeted vulnerable groups — homeless, unemployed people with drug addictions and mental health issues — luring them with cash or other means to enroll in heavily subsidized government insurance plans, then obtaining subsidies through inflated incomes, false addresses, and fabricated information to earn insurance commissions. The scheme sought more than $233 million in subsidies from the government, ultimately causing losses of about $180 million.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to Detroit the same day to campaign for Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed. At a roundtable focused on the health of Black expectant mothers, Harris declared that “attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies are, by definition, attacks on maternal care.”
Citing data, Harris pointed out that maternal mortality rates among minorities are disproportionately high — Black women face four times the risk of death compared to white women — and one in 12 women nationwide lives in a “maternal care desert” lacking medical resources. She used this to criticize conservative politicians who constantly tout “family values,” arguing that eliminating DEI programs strips away protections for expectant mothers in specific communities. She also sharply attacked the Trump administration’s deep cuts to Medicaid funding, accusing it of destroying the largest source of maternal care funding in the United States.
