Senate Leader John Thune Says GAO Audit Found Obamacare Handed Out Subsidies to 90% of Completely Fake Accounts
Senate Republican Leader John Thune took to the Senate floor with a bombshell revelation: a brand-new Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit shows that Obamacare’s subsidy system is so riddled with loopholes that 90% of GAO’s fake, fictitious identities were approved for taxpayer-funded health plans, without proper documentation.
According to the GAO’s findings, Obamacare’s insurance marketplaces, run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), approved subsidized health coverage for nearly all of the watchdog’s fictitious applicants in 2024 and 2025.
In other words, the federal government is sending real tax dollars to cover insurance for people who don’t exist.
And it gets worse.
GAO investigators created 20 fictitious identities, some with completely invalid Social Security numbers, some with mismatched personal information, and attempted to sign up for subsidized Obamacare plans through HealthCare.gov and broker-assisted channels.
The result? 18 of 20 fake applicants were approved and continued receiving benefits as of September 2025.
The federal government even paid over $10,000 per month in subsidies for these imaginary enrollees.
In late 2024, all four fake applicants received fully subsidized insurance.
GAO writes plainly that “the federal Marketplace approved subsidized coverage for nearly all of our fictitious applicants” and that these approvals strongly suggest persistent systemic weaknesses.
For example:
- One fake enrollee received approval after submitting no proof of income or identity.
- Brokers were able to push applications through even when SSNs were flagged as invalid.
- Some fake applicants were never asked to verify citizenship, income, or SSN at all.