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Montana is Minnesota 2.0: Insurance chief exposes NEW Obamacare fraud bust on Glenn Beck
In the wake of Minnesota’s massive fraud scheme busts, some states have started questioning what’s going on within their own borders. In Montana, Commissioner of Insurance and State Auditor James Brown’s curiosity spurred him to do some digging, and what he found made his jaw drop.
On this episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” Glenn sits down with Brown to expose the massive Obamacare fraud scheme he recently uncovered in Montana.
“It’s bad,” Brown says of the scandal. “This is government at its worst. It's human nature at its worst.”
Under Obamacare, members of federally recognized Native American tribes can sign up for Marketplace health insurance plans anytime (not just during open enrollment), often with little or no out-of-pocket costs.
“This scheme involved targeting at-risk Native Americans who live on reservations in Montana, fraudulently enrolling them on Obamacare, then physically transporting them across state lines, which is, as you know, human trafficking, and then billing our insurance company for rehab treatments that did not take place or were unnecessary or performed at greatly inflated costs,” Brown explains.
“And then what would happen is these Native Americans who were targeted then were just dumped out on the streets in Arizona and Southern California.”
“Why were they taken across state lines?” Glenn asks.
Brown explains that a lack of “proper oversight” in places like Los Angeles and Phoenix enabled fraudsters to exploit the Affordable Care Act’s strong protections for mental health and addiction treatment. Under those federal parity laws, insurers are required to cover rehab the same as regular medical care — even from out-of-state providers — allowing distant rehab facilities to rake in large sums of money from fake or inflated bills.
Glenn follows up with the obvious: How much money are we talking here?
“Fifty million with an M in fraud committed through this scheme,” says Brown, adding that the good news is this awareness has allowed his office to prevent another “23.3 million” from being stolen.
But money is only half the horror.
“There's 200 Native Americans that have probably been victimized by this,” says Brown.
However because his jurisdiction is limited to the Montana border, and much of this fraud is taking place outside state lines, he is heavily reliant on the feds for prosecutions.
“Are they actively pursuing this?” Glenn asks.
“The Trump administration has been very helpful on the CMS side, which is the federal agency that administers Obamacare. They've been very active in working with us to make sure these fraudulent payments stop,” says Brown. “Not so much luck so far on the criminal prosecution side, but we are working on that.”
To hear more details about the massive fraud schemes uncovered in Montana, watch the full interview above.
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Democrat lawmakers have rejected Republican attempts to keep the government open amid a looming shutdown, demanding an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller slammed Democrats for refusing to support a "clean, routine government funding bill because it doesn't give free healthcare to illegals."
'The approximately $66.4 billion in federal expenditures attributable to illegal aliens is staggering, and constitutes an increase of 45 percent since 2017.'
Neera Tanden, the former domestic policy adviser under the Biden administration, accused Miller of pushing a "total and complete fabrication."
"This is a lie. It is a violation of law for the ACA premium tax credits to go to illegal aliens," Tanden wrote in a post on X.
ACA's eligibility standards require an individual to be a U.S. citizen or a lawfully present noncitizen, which can include asylum-seekers, refugees, and those granted employment authorization. The Biden administration relaxed criteria for various categories of immigration status, allowing more foreign nationals who were previously considered unlawfully present to qualify for status that may be eligible for ACA tax credits.
Additionally, multiple studies have uncovered that federal tax dollars do reach illegal aliens through the health care system.
The Congressional Budget Office found in October 2024 that the Biden administration had cost state and federal taxpayers $16.2 billion to cover Medicaid emergency services for illegal aliens since taking office.
Paul Winfree, president and CEO of the Economic Policy Innovation Center, told Fox News Digital in March that California has been "exploiting an existing loophole within law" to use billions of dollars in reimbursements from the federal government to provide illegal immigrants with Medicaid.
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California's Department of Healthcare Services claimed EPIC’s report was “misleading.”
A 2023 study from the Federation for American Immigration Reform found $66.4 billion in federal expenditures on illegal aliens, including $23.1 billion in medical spending.
"The approximately $66.4 billion in federal expenditures attributable to illegal aliens is staggering and constitutes an increase of 45 percent since 2017. This amounts to roughly $3,187 per illegal alien, per year," FAIR reported.
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