On Monday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Special Report,” Senate Majority Leader Sen. John Thune (R-SD) stated that Senate Republicans are willing to talk about the premium tax credit, just not in the context of a government shutdown and the program “is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse.” And lacks any sort of income cap.
Thune said, “[W]e welcome that conversation, but you can’t hold the federal government hostage. Release the hostage, and then we can start talking about these other things.”
He added, “Well, the premium tax credit issue is something we’re willing to have a conversation about. But the fact of the matter is, it is rife with waste, fraud, and abuse. It needs reforms. It is a program where the government pays — makes direct payments to insurance companies, insurance companies get subsidies to cover more people, so, through their agents and brokers, they go out and auto-enroll people, many of whom don’t even know they have coverage. And of the 23 million people who were covered in the exchanges last year, 12 million never filed a claim, because a lot of them don’t know they have coverage. And there [are] no income caps on it. There’s a couple in West Virginia making $580,000 a year that’s getting subsidies from the federal government for their health care.”
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