{"id":2450653,"date":"2025-06-23T08:18:00","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/think-tank-ignores-potential-fraud-to-smear-trump-budget-bill\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T08:21:47","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T12:21:47","slug":"think-tank-ignores-potential-fraud-to-smear-trump-budget-bill","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/think-tank-ignores-potential-fraud-to-smear-trump-budget-bill\/","title":{"rendered":"Think Tank Ignores Potential Fraud To Smear Trump Budget Bill"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"float:left\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">20<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthink-tank-ignores-potential-fraud-to-smear-trump-budget-bill%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2450653&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/dei-disaster-petition-circulating-within-secret-service-community-warns-of-potential-insider-threats\/\" title=\"DEI Crisis: Secret Service Petition Raises Concerns About &#039;Insider Threats\">article discusses concerns<\/a> regarding potential fraud in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/obamacare-enrollment-is-half-of-initial-projections-triple-the-price\/\" title=\"Obamacare enrollment falls short, costs triple.\">health insurance enrollment<\/a>, notably in relation to a recent reconciliation bill passed by the House. It critiques organizations like the Kaiser Family Foundation for focusing primarily on increasing insurance coverage without addressing the implications of fraudulent claims, such as individuals illegally obtaining subsidies or those inflating or deflating their income to qualify for benefits. The author cites a study by the Paragon Health Institute indicating that enrollments in states with non-expanded Medicaid exceed eligible populations, suggesting significant fraud. This discrepancy in enrollment data raises questions about the integrity of the system, which the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/sen-blackburn-bidens-amnesty-invites-cheap-labor\/\" title=\"Sen. Blackburn: Biden\u2019s amnesty invites cheap labor\">reconciliation bill aims<\/a> to reform. The article argues that left-leaning organizations prefer to promote the total number of insured individuals rather than ensure that coverage is legitimate and fiscally responsible. The piece concludes with a call for conservatives to focus on more critical issues, like national debt, rather than merely playing into the left&#8217;s narrative on health coverage.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>The left is ignoring potential fraud to pursue its own ideological objectives.<\/p>\n<p>That&rsquo;s the shorter version of a series of analyses regarding the House-passed reconciliation bill released in recent days by the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kaiser Family Foundation<\/a>. The organization, and other leftist groups like it, fixate solely on the number of individuals with health insurance coverage &mdash; regardless of whether those individuals engage in fraud, or even whether those individuals belong in this country.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/affordable-care-act\/issue-brief\/how-will-the-2025-reconciliation-bill-affect-the-uninsured-rate-in-each-state-allocating-cbos-estimates-of-coverage-loss\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Kaiser<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/quick-take\/an-additional-8-2-million-people-are-expected-to-be-uninsured-from-changes-in-the-aca-marketplaces\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">analyses<\/a> create state-by-state breakdowns of projected changes in insurance coverage, based on national estimates from the Congressional Budget Office (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.cbo.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">CBO<\/a>). These <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >specialized estimates push greater propaganda<\/a> than information because Kaiser and affiliated groups pitch scary headlines to the local press in each state: &ldquo;Republicans&rsquo; legislation will mean X thousand people will lose health insurance &mdash; right here in this state!&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>If that all sounds too cynical, consider what Kaiser had to say about an <a href=\"https:\/\/paragoninstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/06\/The-Great-Obamacare-Enrollment-Fraud_FOR_RELEASE_V2.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">enrollment study<\/a> conducted last year by the Paragon Health Institute, a right-leaning think tank. (Disclosure: While I have <a href=\"https:\/\/paragoninstitute.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/Beginning_to_Stem_the_Red_Ink_Tide_FOR_RELEASE_V3.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">previously done work<\/a> for Paragon, I had no involvement in the enrollment study last year.)<\/p>\n<p>The Paragon study examined Exchange enrollment based on reported income and compared those enrollments to Census Bureau estimates of population based on income. In some states, particularly those that have not expanded Medicaid, the number of Exchange enrollees reporting the lowest income &mdash; who qualify for the richest subsidies &mdash; exceeds the number of people the Census Bureau indicates <em>exist<\/em> in that state. For instance, Florida reported more than 460,000 enrollees with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level. The Census Bureau data, however, suggests that only about 175,000 eligible individuals earn that income without another source of health coverage.<\/p>\n<p>Because so many more people have enrolled than those who are potentially eligible to enroll, the data from the Paragon study reveals that many individuals are lying about their income, for one of two reasons. In states like Florida that have not expanded Medicaid, individuals may inflate their income because people with income below the poverty level do not qualify for Exchange subsidies (a <em>de facto<\/em> <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2024\/03\/18\/mississippis-work-requirement-for-medicaid-is-just-an-excuse-to-expand-the-welfare-state\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">work requirement<\/a> in those states). In other cases, people may deflate their income because they realize, for instance, that claiming to make only $30,000 instead of $70,000 means they will qualify for higher subsidy amounts.<\/p>\n<p>Data like this prompted the Trump administration to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cms.gov\/newsroom\/fact-sheets\/2025-marketplace-integrity-and-affordability-proposed-rule\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">issue a proposed rule<\/a> in March, attempting to <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/03\/14\/3-ways-trump-plans-to-root-out-rampant-obamacare-fraud\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">limit the ways<\/a> individuals can game the system. The reconciliation bill would codify some of those proposals in legislation, as opposed to regulations, and contains other similar reforms. Of course, those changes may impact coverage outcomes, which brings us back to Kaiser.<\/p>\n<p>In the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.kff.org\/affordable-care-act\/issue-brief\/how-will-the-2025-reconciliation-bill-affect-the-uninsured-rate-in-each-state-allocating-cbos-estimates-of-coverage-loss\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">methodological section<\/a> of its report, Kaiser admitted that it also analyzed enrollment by income group and used much of the same Census Bureau data that Paragon analyzed to come up with its conclusions last year. So, I asked Kaiser a simple question: Did they see the same problematic trends (i.e., potential fraud) that Paragon did &mdash; and if so, why not mention that fact in the report?<\/p>\n<p>The response I got from Jared Ortaliza, one of the authors of the Kaiser study, included some methodological explanations, along with a final sentence that proved the most telling: &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think this has any relevance to the Paragon analysis.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>That says it all in a nutshell. Leftist organizations like Kaiser don&rsquo;t care whether changes in insurance coverage occur because people claimed they qualified for subsidies when they didn&rsquo;t, or even because they were living in this country illegally but were <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2025\/03\/21\/californias-massive-medicaid-shortfall-would-disappear-if-it-quit-paying-8b-for-illegals-health-care\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">receiving government-funded coverage<\/a>. Both represent sources of potential coverage &ldquo;losses&rdquo; due to the reconciliation bill, yet many might argue that such groups never should have qualified for taxpayer-subsidized insurance initially.<\/p>\n<p>Kaiser only cares about the number of people with coverage &mdash; preferably, with government-run coverage. It doesn&rsquo;t matter whether such &ldquo;coverage&rdquo; doesn&rsquo;t actually provide care &mdash; a former state Medicaid director once <a href=\"http:\/\/www.allhealthpolicy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/TranscriptFINAL-1685.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">described a Medicaid card<\/a> as a &ldquo;hunting license [that gives] you a chance to go try to find a doctor&rdquo;&mdash; or how much it costs taxpayers.<\/p>\n<p>Conservatives should stop trying to play the left&rsquo;s game and instead focus on more important metrics, including our $36 trillion in debt. Otherwise, our nation will rapidly discover what Margaret Thatcher famously <a href=\"https:\/\/www.margaretthatcher.org\/document\/102953\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">observed<\/a> nearly half a century ago: &ldquo;Socialist governments traditionally do make a financial mess. They always run out of other people&rsquo;s money.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<hr>\n<div>\n<p>      Chris Jacobs is founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and author of the book &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/dp\/1645720020\">The Case Against Single Payer<\/a>.&#8221; He is on Twitter: <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/chrisjacobsHC\">@chrisjacobsHC<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The left overlooks potential fraud to achieve its ideological goals<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":521,"featured_media":2450654,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/50732453647_fc0779adce_k.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[55364,6909,57728,3634],"class_list":["post-2450653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-budgetbill","tag-fraud","tag-thinktank","tag-trump"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/50732453647_fc0779adce_k.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/521"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450653"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2450657,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450653\/revisions\/2450657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2450654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}