Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion:
Most adult humans in American understand the difference between comprehensive health insurance, and separate dental plans.
Apparently, HHS staffers are neither adult humans, nor aware of the ability of a congressional committee to sniff out fraud connected to a controversial cluster of a health care bill.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee started digging into the truth behind the Administration’s Obamacare enrollment numbers after officials offered testimony to the committee claiming that there were 7.3 million “Americans enrolled in Health Insurance Marketplace coverage” under Obamacare. This is what they found:
Committee staff discovered that nearly 400,000 of the 7.3 million enrollments reported by CMS are stand-alone dental plans, rather than health insurance. Committee staff identified nearly 300 plans that averaged monthly premiums of $60 or less, with many premiums averaging less than $10 a month. After matching the Plan IDs for these “outlier plans” against CMS’ own public database, investigators were able to determine that these plans are stand-alone dental coverage.
Although the Committee identified nearly 400,000 dental plan enrollments, the figure could certainly be higher due to high-cost dental plans with premiums above the Committee’s $60 outlier threshold. The Committee was able to identify at least two such dental plans with monthly premiums above the $60 dollar threshold.
By doing this, HHS was able to hid the fact that actual enrollments via the exchanges fell short by more than a million enrollees.
HHS has already revised its reports, and Secretary Sylvia Burwell is busy claiming that the inclusion of the almost 400,000 extra enrollees was a “mistake.”
The mistake we made is unacceptable. I will be communicating that clearly throughout the dept.
— Sylvia Burwell (@SecBurwell) November 20, 2014
House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., however, isn’t buying the “mistake”:
