A Decade of CMS Neglect, Filibuster Gridlock, and Minnesota’s Warning Signal
The Government Accountability Office delivered a devastating blow to the Affordable Care Act in December 2025, uncovering through undercover probes that 92 percent of fabricated applicants—equipped with phony identities, invented incomes, and Social Security numbers lifted from graves—effortlessly claimed subsidies. This exposes not mere oversight but outright dereliction by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, where Administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure commands a regime hemorrhaging up to $27 billion yearly in fraudulent disbursements, all while everyday Americans shoulder premiums bloated 220 percent since 2010. GAO documents GAO-26-108742 and GAO-26-108811 chronicle 22 of 24 sham enrollees greenlit for over $12,300 in monthly advance premium tax credits, extrapolating to $147,000 annually per test cohort, plus $94 million siphoned to 58,000 deceased in 2024 and a single SSN anchoring 125 policies over 71 years. CMS’s stonewalling of GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework reveals a festering wound: $124 billion in 2024 subsidies infested with rot, encompassing 12 million phantom participants who filed zero claims, artificially inflating insurer coffers via unchecked auto-enrollments. Brooks-LaSure’s stewardship, perpetuating Xavier Becerra’s Biden-era bloat, favors raw numbers over scrutiny, morphing Obamacare into a brazen taxpayer rip-off that screams for eradication.
These cracks trace to 2016, when GAO-16-29 laid bare identical weaknesses: 12 of 18 covert applicants glided past with doctored papers, underscoring voids in identity validation and data matching that CMS rebuffed. Subsequent audits like GAO-16-792 and GAO-16-784 drove home the stakes, projecting billions vanished into identity scams and unvetted claims, yet spans from Obama to Biden administrations spurned remedies. Becerra’s watch escalated the debacle, ballooning subsidies sans reinforcements, yielding a 50 percent enrollment spike that concealed fraud as premiums pummeled households with $10,000-plus yearly spikes. DEI mandates at HHS have dodged exposure, propping up appointments attuned more to appearances than vigilance, empowering brokers to rig the game unhindered. This decade of willful blindness interrogates CMS’s core—Brooks-LaSure and her cadre own this plunder, no quarter for excuses in unmasking how their lapses pilfer public funds.
Congressional fallout from these disclosures mixes GOP fury with cross-aisle inertia, the Senate filibuster acting as corruption’s chief guardian. House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith and Senate Finance Chairman Mike Crapo lambasted the revelations, branding Obamacare a wellspring of “waste, fraud, and abuse” and advancing H.R. 2079 to levy $200,000 penalties and incarceration on crooked brokers. House Oversight under James Comer solicited GAO scrutiny of $1.6 billion in Medicaid overlaps, as Senate Leader John Thune assailed the 90 percent sham success rate from the floor. Democrats such as Jamie Raskin trivialized the probes as inflated, Sarah McBride deriding them as “bullshit” from malefactors, shunning overhauls that could blemish the ACA’s record—no Democrat bucked its 2010 enactment, and their evasion endures. Holding a 53-47 Senate edge and slim House majority by December 31, 2025, Republicans’ trifecta with President Trump equips them to obliterate the filibuster by bare majority, unlocking rapid strikes. Trump commanded it December 27, asserting the 60-vote hurdle sustains “dishonest” elections and unchecked scams—his declarations hold true, unchallenged by top-tier primaries. Yet Thune’s defiance, mirrored by outliers like Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, safeguards establishment perks, bottlenecking H.R. 2079 and ACA abolition despite the arsenal to purge this blight.
The October 2025 shutdown epitomizes this deadlock, with Chuck Schumer—demoted to Minority Leader—and Hakeem Jeffries commandeering appropriations to wrest a $450 billion subsidy lifeline expiring December 31. Spurning a pristine Republican House bill, they ignited a 43-day ordeal, history’s longest, idling 900,000 employees, gutting SNAP for 41 million from $356 to $178 monthly, and inflicting $11 billion in economic carnage per CBO tallies. TSA bottlenecks and military pay gaps amplified the suffering, all to armor a scam-laden scheme. The deadlock shattered November 12 as eight centrist Senate Democrats bolted, securing funding to January 30, 2026, minus the handout—Schumer and Jeffries’ maneuver bared their elevation of partisan games over reckoning, stalling fraud countermeasures as GAO alerts blared. Thune’s filibuster fealty merely aggravates the betrayal, casting doubt on his resolve as abettor in sustaining drains that Trump’s team, spearheaded by FBI Director Kash Patel, pledges to excise.
Federal negligence spills to states, Minnesota under Tim Walz surfacing as Obamacare’s fraud nexus. The ACA’s 2014 Medicaid swell added 700,000 to 1.4 million rolls, weaving frail checks that ape GAO’s critiques and spawned $18 billion disbursals over 14 programs since 2018—prosecutors flag $9 billion pilfered via spectral services and dummy firms. Walz’s Human Services Department, helmed by Jodi Harpstead, snubbed HHS Inspector General alerts on shoddy fraud squads, disbursing $207 million to the departed in 2025. Outrages mount: Feeding Our Future’s $250 million child feeding grab netted 90 convictions, homing in on Somali webs; fresh housing indictments pinned $3.5 million on interstate grifters for vapor aid; daycare footage unmasked vacant sites billing fortunes. DEI at DHS has cloaked ineptitude, permitting “fraud tourists” to mine gaps unseen. Patel’s FBI dubs Minnesota a “fraud laundering epicenter,” Trump’s December 30 $185 million childcare cutoff invokes these bonds—Walz and Harpstead claim this plague, their bloat converting ACA edicts into statewide larceny devouring 40 percent of Minnesota’s coffers.
Complicit threads weave tight: GAO’s spurned 2016-2025 cautions breed mismatched data and broker ploys across borders, intensified in Minnesota by Walz’s disregard and DEI dodges favoring tokenism over audits. Federal-state bonds unveil ACA chinks fueling syndicates to wash spoils into crypto or extravagance, jacking premiums amid congressional dallying. Thune’s filibuster shield and Schumer’s blockade unveil bipartisan barricades, favoring cronies over citizens—Trump’s imperative to scrap it merits obedience, as do Patel’s inquests. No regime dodges culpability, but Democrats’ rebuttals and GOP waffling fuel the loop.
Dismantle this apparatus: Torch the filibuster, enact H.R. 2079, indict Brooks-LaSure, Becerra, Walz, and accomplices. Scrap Obamacare for competitive overhauls quashing scams. Unearth DEI decay shunning light—truth eclipses qualms, exacting reckoning from power to reclaim billions for the people.
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