As Congress debates whether to extend Obamacare premium tax credits, a new report from the Government Accountability Office reveals the subsidies are prone to fraud and sometimes go to dead people.
The office, which is funded by Congress, revealed on Dec. 3 that the Obamacare marketplace “initially approved coverage for 19 of our 20 fictitious applicants” for 2025 premium tax credits in an audit of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.
“It is an eye-opener,” Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., told reporters Wednesday of the report.
The speaker also said the report backs up his advocacy for reforming the premium tax credits that Democrats have demanded to extend.
“It makes clear why it would be a dereliction of duty to just extend subsidies without massive reforms to them,” Johnson said.
The government report said coverage continued for months for these phony enrollees.
“As of September 2025, coverage for 18 fictitious enrollees remained active,” the report reads. “The results of our covert testing for plan year 2025 are generally consistent with results of similar testing we conducted for plan years 2014 through 2016.”
The report additionally found $94 million spent in premium tax credits toward consumers whose Social Security numbers are associated with a deceased person in 2023.
The analysis of 2023 data “identified over 58,000 [social security numbers] that received” a premium tax credit despite belonging to people who were marked as deceased in Social Security Administration death data.
This is approximately .42% of the social security numbers that received a premium tax credit that year.
According to Johnson, “The Obamacare exchange and insurers didn’t verify any of the information they were supposed to under the law, and they proceeded to pay tens of thousands of dollars to insurance companies for people who do not exist.”
