Dr. Mehmet Oz raised allegations of widespread fraud involving Obamacare enrollment during an exchange with Kayleigh McEnany, pointing to Florida data that he said shows significantly more people receiving maximum subsidies than the number of residents who should qualify.
McEnany introduced a map of Florida that Oz said should concern taxpayers across the country because federal money pays for the subsidies.
“You say that this is the map that should alarm every taxpayer,” McEnany said.
“Let’s pull it up. This is a map of Florida, and you say that Obamacare enrollment in the highest subsidy category exceeds the eligible population in nearly every Florida county. How is that possible?”
“Fraud. Tens of billions of dollars of fraud,” Oz responded.
Oz said the agency he runs is responsible for Obamacare and claimed employees told him after he arrived that they had previously known about problems but were unable to address them.
“And I’m running the agency that’s responsible for the Obamacare catastrophe, and what I hear over and over again is, We knew this was a problem. We weren’t allowed to do anything about it in the prior administration,” Oz said.
He argued that employees at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services choose government service despite having opportunities to make more money elsewhere and become frustrated when prevented from performing their jobs.
“And people at CMS can get paid a lot more money on the outside. They come to serve the American people. So the only thing they don’t tolerate is not being allowed to do their job,” Oz said.
Oz said he learned about the issue on his first day and moved to examine it.
He credited Brian Blase and the Paragon think tank with assembling data related to the enrollment figures.
“So I walk in the door first day, I hear about this story, and we went after it,” Oz said.
“So Brian Blase, I want to give him credit, superstar that’s been pulling a lot of this data together with Paragon, their think tank.”
Oz then explained the comparison he said exposed the discrepancy. According to his account, Census figures can be used to determine how many residents live in individual counties and their income levels.
He said those figures can then be compared with the number of people enrolled in Obamacare and receiving subsidies.
“But let me give you the number, and just, you can’t lie about this stuff,” Oz said.
“The Census reports how many people live in a county and how much money they make, right?”
Oz said Obamacare provides subsidies to people whose incomes fall between one and four times the poverty level and argued that Census data therefore provides a measure of how many residents could qualify based on income.
“Obamacare pays people if they’re living between one and four times the poverty level,” Oz said.
“The Census tells us how many people would be eligible for that reason to be on Obamacare.”
Oz said the number of people receiving coverage in what he called the free or $0 category is five times greater than the eligible Florida population reflected in those figures.
“It’s five times more people on Obamacare in the free category, the $0 category, five times more than live in Florida in that category,” Oz said. “It’s impossible!”
He rejected the possibility that the discrepancy could simply be explained by Census data substantially undercounting the eligible population.
“You don’t have to even pretend to make this stuff up. It’s right there. The Census cannot be a fraction of what’s really happening. It’s the opposite. The Census is accurate,” Oz said.
Oz said the pattern appears across almost every Florida county and claimed that some counties show even larger differences between the number of Obamacare enrollees and the population he says should be eligible.
“We have five times more people in Florida, almost every county, some of them double digit more people on Obamacare than exist in the county,” Oz said.
Oz concluded by arguing that the financial consequences extend beyond Florida because the subsidies are paid with federal tax dollars collected nationwide.
“That’s tens of billions of dollars of federal tax dollars,” Oz said.
“I don’t care where you live in America. It’s happening in Florida, but it’s coming out of your pocket in every other state in the country to pay for this stuff.”
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