EDITORIAL: ObamaCare’s benefit basics blown

March 22--Whatever results from "repeal and replace" legislation, the GOP-controlled Congress must not perpetuate flaws that allowed ObamaCare's health-insurance exchanges to award $21.8 million in advance premium tax credits to people who weren't eligible to receive them.

That happened in 2014, according to a new audit. Those tax credits help low- to moderate-income Americans pay for coverage, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the exchanges, "should ensure that an individual who applies for the tax credit has his identity verified and ... is eligible to receive the payment," The Washington Free Beacon says.

The audit found "11,388 individuals ... received $21.8 million in tax credit payments even though one or more of the eligibility requirements" -- citizenship or legal residency, living in the same state where the exchange is located, not being incarcerated -- "was not met." For 2,498 applications, "there was no data present," meaning that "the exchanges did not verify eligibility at all."

And ObamaCare's "good faith" provision let some ineligible individuals keep getting these tax credits just because they'd submitted "any documentation, regardless of its relevance," The Free Beacon reports.

Whether it's ObamaCare, its replacement, or any other federal benefit, applicants' identities and eligibility must be subject to strict verification. And for those determined to "game" the system, the penalties should be swift and severe.

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