Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), a physician, on Wednesday said the Democrats’ refusal to address the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse that comes with the Obamacare subsidies is “insulting” to the American taxpayer.
Barrasso took to the Senate floor to respond to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) contention that the Senate Republican plan for healthcare, informally known as the Crapo-Cassidy plan, is “insulting.”
The Wyoming conservative argued that what is truly insulting is “that the Minority Leader and the Democrats want to send $83 billion of taxpayer money directly from the Treasury of the United States to health insurance corporations who’ve continued to get rich off of Obamacare. That is insulting to the American people.”
He continued, “That is a program that is riddled – riddled – with fraud. That’s what they want – these COVID Bonus programs put forth by Joe Biden – they want just three more years, more direct checks to insurance companies, taxpayer money with no accountability.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=73bYZdPXaVE
Barrasso noted that the enhanced Obamcare subsidies have been found to be ridden with rampant waste, fraud, and abuse. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found there is a staggering level of fraud that comes with the subsidies.
The Wyoming Republican noted that the Big Beautiful Bill moved to set up anti-fraud verification to “make it hard to cheat the system.”
Barrasso continued:
What Republicans did was restored income verification. Democrats: ‘Nope, we don’t want to verify income. Send these subsidies to millionaires.’ You know, you hear the Senator from New Hampshire – I’m sorry, the Senator from Vermont – down here talking about tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires. They want to send subsidies for healthcare for millionaires and billionaires. You can make that much money this year, keep sending them the subsidies. Now, people are going to need to verify their income when they re-enroll. And we’re going to require a full repayment when individuals have underreported their income in an effort to get higher subsidies because it’s fraud. Every single Democrat voted against the fraud provisions. They voted against these protections that we had against fraud. And now Democrats, with what they want to do for the next three years, want to make the fraud dramatically worse.
This needs to end. The American people deserve the care they need, from a doctor that they choose, at a price they can afford. Obamacare absolutely failed to deliver that. Republicans are committed to protecting taxpayers. Committed to rooting out the waste, the fraud, the abuse and the corruption that has become epidemic in Obamacare.
“So when the Minority Leader comes to the Floor and makes his statements and talks about the Republican proposal being ‘insulting,’ I would tell you what the Democrats have foisted on the American people has been insulting,” Barrasso concluded in his speech. “And the waste, fraud, and abuse that continues is a continued insult to American taxpayers.”
Read the full article here