So here’s the deal. A task force led by JD Vance — the guy who literally wrote the book on being a fraud — is going to cancel 760,000 ACA enrollments. They’re calling it an antifraud crackdown. They say it’s going to save $2.2 billion.
Let’s be real about what this is. There are real fraudsters — 40 brokers who generated 50,000 fake enrollments and cost $45 million. Fuck those guys. Throw the book at them. But Vance and his crew are not stopping at the real fraud. They’re planning to check the immigration status and income eligibility of 415,000 current enrollees. They’re ending a policy that let people keep their subsidies while they proved their eligibility. They’re dropping the hammer on 760,000 people. That’s a purge, not a cleanup.
The tatemae is ‘saving taxpayer money.’ The honne is making the ACA look like a failure so you can take a running chainsaw to it. They’re going to cancel people who are eligible but got signed up by a shitty broker who didn’t do their paperwork. They’re going to cancel people who have employer coverage but needed the backup. They’re going to cancel people who didn’t jump through the right hoops fast enough. And they’re going to count every single one of those cancellations as a ‘saving’ — as if the cost of someone’s insulin or their kid’s asthma meds was a goddamn tax cut.
You want to save real money? Go after the insurance companies that built a system where you need a broker to even figure out what plan you’re buying. Go after the hospital systems that charge $50 for a bandage. But no. They’d rather throw 760,000 people off the rolls, pat themselves on the back, and call it a win.
Eat shit, Vance. You knew exactly what you were doing.
Source story: Vance task force to cancel 760,000 ACA enrollments, projecting $2.2B savings.