What A Surprise: Obamacare Subsidies Available For Fraudulent Applicants

July 23, 2014 National Journal reports that people applying with fake identification, fake social security numbers, and fraudulent claims of low income were usually able to get subsidies for their health insurance: 

Fake applicants were able to get subsidized insurance coverage in 11 of 18 attempts, according to a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office. The agency conducted the sting operation to test the strength of the Affordable Care Act's eligibility-verification system.

The findings will be discussed at a House Ways and Means hearing Wednesday. They were revealed in an advance copy of the testimony from Seto Bagdoyan, head of GAO's Forensic Audits and Investigative Service, provided to the Associated Press.

The undercover investigators created fake identities by inventing Social Security numbers, income, and citizenship, and by counterfeiting documents.

Part of why I was mildly tolerant of Obamacare's web page failure problem was that what they were doing was hard: opening up secure databases from multiple government agencies to verify the accurate of stuff like Social Security numbers, income, and citizenship.  These databases are secure, and should be.  But if they can't even verify the data accurately, they have less excuse for their failure to do it efficiently.