The federal government apparently wastes more than a billion bucks a year on medical insurance for family members of federal employees who don’t qualify for it. And they’ve known about the improper spending for years, already, but done nothing about it.
Once again, it is nice to work for the corrupt, crooked federal government, huh?
The information was revealed in a recent report filed by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.
Per Just the News:
“This is a flagrant waste of funds and may be driving up premium costs for eligible participants,” House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Kentucky, wrote in a letter to the Office of Personnel Management.
About 8 million federal employees and their families get health insurance benefits through the Federal Employees Health Benefits program. In 2021, the Office of Personnel Management began requiring some new program enrollees to verify that their family members were eligible. However, the Office of Personnel Management doesn’t have a process to identify and remove ineligible family members already enrolled.
“The program may be spending almost $1 billion per year on payments for ineligible members,” according to the GAO report.
The report recommended the Office of Personnel Management take steps to remove ineligible family members and assess fraud risks associated with ineligible program members. It highlighted some cases. For example, a federal employee fraudulently covered two people said to be his wife and stepchild in the FEHB program. Both were ineligible, but remained on FEHB health insurance for 12 years. The program paid claims worth more than $100,000 on behalf of two ineligible people, according to the report.
Here we have millions Americans who can’t afford health insurance, and the families of tens of thousands of federal employees are getting it for free even though they don’t qualify.
Government does nothing well except graft.
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