American taxpayers have been fleeced out of a staggering $65 billion through improper enrollments in Obamacare and expanded Medicaid programs in 2024 alone, according to a recent report from the Paragon Health Institute. This colossal sum represents premiums paid for individuals who either did not exist or failed to meet the eligibility requirements for these federal health insurance initiatives.
The report, released on August 26, exposed a massive breakdown in oversight, revealing that a combined 14.3 million people were improperly enrolled that year under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the signature legislative achievement of the Obama administration.
Paragon's researchers estimate that a shocking 34 percent of all Marketplace enrollees in 2024 were either outright fraudulent, duplicates, or simply unqualified for the benefits they received. Disturbingly, the problem only escalated, with improper exchange enrollment soaring by more than 26 percent from 2024 to 2025, reaching an estimated 6.5 million illicit enrollees.
Digging deeper, the report concluded that over 9 million Medicaid expansion enrollees in 2024 likely did not qualify. These were individuals whose incomes exceeded the limits, failed to meet citizenship or residency requirements, or should have been placed in traditional Medicaid. For Obamacare, the system's $0 premium policies, especially prevalent in the post-COVID years, became a magnet for fraud. Paragon President Brian Blase, testifying before Congress, highlighted unscrupulous insurance brokers who enrolled people without their knowledge, pocketing federal commission checks while the government paid premiums for phantom beneficiaries. A clear indicator of this scam? The lack of activity from these 'enrollees' once they were on the books. Furthermore, 28 states reported more Obamacare enrollees than residents actually meeting the income criteria—a glaring red flag if ever there was one.
While some establishment voices, such as Covered California, dismiss claims of "systemic fraud, waste, or abuse" in state-based marketplaces, and America's Health Insurance Plans argues that "no-claims" years might simply mean a healthy consumer, real-world investigations paint a far more damning picture.
In December 2025, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) delivered irrefutable evidence. Investigators successfully enrolled 20 nonexistent identities into Obamacare in 2024, using easily fabricated documents and Social Security numbers that had never been issued. Astonishingly, 18 of these false enrollments were still active by September 2025, bleeding taxpayers for more than $10,000 every single month. The GAO also uncovered 26,000 accounts that received subsidies in 2023 based on Social Security numbers belonging to deceased individuals. This discovery alone cost taxpayers over $94 million in a single year.
Only after such widespread and undeniable waste came to light did the federal government take "aggressive action." In the last two years, this included suspending agents and brokers, reinstating data matching to prevent duplicates, canceling phantom enrollments, and mandating Medicaid eligibility recertification every six months.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reported in January that it had removed over 1 million enrollees who were concurrently signed up for Obamacare and Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program, or who had failed to reconcile previously received subsidies. Another 250,000 were removed because they had been enrolled without their consent. These necessary corrections, a reaction to a broken system, have reportedly produced $10 billion in annual savings—a testament to the enormous scale of the problem that should have been prevented in the first place.
This massive drain on taxpayer funds is a stark reminder of the urgent need for stringent accountability and fiscal responsibility within government programs. Americans work hard for their money, and they expect their elected officials to safeguard it, not allow it to be squandered on rampant fraud and administrative incompetence. The America First movement demands nothing less than integrity, transparency, and a relentless focus on securing every dollar of public trust from waste and abuse.
