Tag: insurance

The Black Sea Is Becoming Uninsurable

The Black Sea is rapidly becoming too dangerous for international commerce. Commercial vessels have been attacked near Romania, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia within days of one another. Ships carrying agricultural products and petroleum are being dragged into a war. Politicians seem to forget that global trade depends on moving goods safely between nations. Once commercial shipping becomes a target, the economic consequences extend far beyond Russia and Ukraine. Insurance premiums rise, freight rates increase, and eventually those additional costs are passed directly to consumers who have absolutely nothing to do with this war.

On October 5, a commercial vessel caught fire and sank off Romania, killing two people. The following day, two additional merchant vessels were struck by drones inside Bulgaria’s exclusive economic zone, with one reportedly sinking. Another vessel carrying agricultural oil was attacked near Odesa, while an oil tanker was struck off Russia’s Black Sea coast. Responsibility for some of these incidents remains disputed, but the economic consequences do not depend on which side launched the drones. Shipping companies must now calculate the possibility of losing an entire vessel and its cargo. Insurers must price that risk, and nobody in this business operates on charity.

People do not understand how quickly the cost of war moves through the global economy. A ship owner facing increased war-risk insurance premiums will demand higher compensation to enter dangerous waters. Charter rates rise, cargo owners seek alternative routes, and ports become increasingly expensive to operate. If insurance becomes unavailable at a commercially reasonable price, vessels simply stop sailing certain routes. Every additional expense becomes part of the final price, whether that means wheat, cooking oil, gasoline, or the thousands of other products.

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Trump Wants to Give $90 to Seniors and $76 Billion to Health Insurers

With less than a month from the midterm elections, President Trump announced that more than 20 million seniors would get a payment of “nearly $100” to help with their Medicare Part B premiums. The White House later said the actual amount of the one-time payment is $90 and will come from the Medicare Improvement Fund which was created in 2008 to improve traditional Medicare. The White House says it holds about $2 billion.

Congress had been planning to tap the fund later this year to help finance a modest Medicare pay increase for doctors and extend several health programs, including funding for community health centers and bonuses for doctors participating in certain alternative payment models. With the fund now being used for the $90 payments, lawmakers will have to find the money elsewhere or put those plans on hold.

Money is money and I am all for helping American seniors with their medical bills, but $90 won’t cover even half of one month’s premium. After a record increase this year, the standard Part B premium is $202.90

But what’s not in the announcement is far more important than what’s in it: Neither Trump nor CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz has said a word about clawing back the tens of billions of dollars Medicare overpays private insurers every year. Neither did any administration before them, at least not in a way that stuck. In 2026 alone, the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) estimates Medicare will pay Medicare Advantage plans $76 billion more than it would spend on the same people in traditional Medicare.

So the $2 billion Trump plans to hand out is less than 3% of what insurers will collect in excess payments this year.

If the $76 billion troubles you then the bigger picture is going to be truly startling. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget projects that if nothing changes, overpayments will total about $1.2 trillion through 2035. That is all money that big insurance companies like UnitedHealthcare, Aetna and Humana get to keep. And it’s money that they don’t want to give up – again with taxpayers being stuck with the bill.

And seniors themselves pay part of that bill. CRFB estimates Medicare Advantage overpayments will add $230 billion to Part B premiums over the next decade. Those higher premiums are paid by everyone enrolled in Part B, including seniors in traditional Medicare who never signed up for a private Medicare Advantage plan.

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Vance Fraud Task Force Condemned as ‘Smokescreen’ for Booting 700,000 More People Off Healthcare

The Trump administration is planning to boot more than 700,000 people from their Affordable Care Act coverage as part of a purported initiative to root out fraud in the program—an effort that campaigners said is nothing more than a pretext to kick more people off healthcare.

Vice President JD Vance, who is leading the White House’s “Task Force to Eliminate Fraud,” announced the planned ACA purge during a press conference on Tuesday alongside Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, whose agency has touted a right-wing think tank’s dubious claim that millions of ACA enrollees are on the program improperly.

Vance insisted during Tuesday’s press conference that the administration is putting itself “under an extraordinary burden of proof” to ensure its mass removal doesn’t impact people who are eligible for ACA coverage, but advocates were not convinced.

“Vance’s task force is a smokescreen for kicking people off coverage,” declared the advocacy group Protect Our Care. The organization’s president, Brad Woodhouse, said in a statement that Vance’s task force “is nothing more than a bullshit distraction—a political stunt designed to throw even more people off their coverage while pretending to save taxpayers’ money.”

“At a time when millions of Americans are already losing coverage and facing skyrocketing costs, Vance and this administration are making the crisis exponentially worse,” said Woodhouse. “They are piling on more red tape, more confusion, and more opportunities for people to lose the coverage they rely on. Families need coverage they can afford and count on when they get sick. Vance’s task force won’t accomplish that. It’s a smokescreen for an administration whose sole mission is to make it harder to get and stay covered but to shower billionaires with tax breaks instead.”

Millions of people have lost ACA and Medicaid coverage since the start of President Donald Trump’s second White House term, due in large part to a Republican budget law that cut Medicaid by more than $800 billion and did nothing to extend enhanced ACA subsidies, sending premiums soaring.

Trump administration officials have baselessly claimed that their anti-fraud efforts were the key driver of ACA enrollment declines this year.

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Trump Announces $500 Obamacare Rebate Checks to Nearly 1 Million Americans “Wrongly Ripped Off” by Biden Administration

President Trump announced in a video statement on Thursday that rebate checks for families who were “wrongly ripped off” by the Biden Administration through the Obamacare exchange and healthcare.gov will be delivered ahead of the November elections. 

Checks to nearly one million Americans across 30 states will be delivered in “just a few weeks,” Trump said. The White House announced that checks will be sent to those eligible beginning in October.

Trump announced the initiative, dubbed the “Working Families Obamacare Refunds,” in a video statement.

WATCH:

Trump: Today, I’m very thrilled to make an important announcement on the cost of health care affecting hardworking families all across the United States. Our administration has discovered that under Sleepy Joe Biden, American households buying health insurance through the Obamacare exchange, which is a disaster, and the healthcare.gov were massively overcharged, to put it mildly.

They were forced to pay excessive fees, totaling at least $500 million. The last administration knew about this and they studied it, but they kept the money. They just kept it. They never let anyone know. Our administration is doing the right thing and giving the money back to the people who were wrongly ripped off.

Nearly one million hardworking Americans in 30 states will soon be getting refunds of $500 each with a check sent to their home address. In many cases, these refunds will cover the entire spike in your insurance caused by Democrats, who solely work to protect big insurance companies. The big insurance companies own the Democrats.

Congress must now quickly pass the Great Health Care Plan. It’s called the Great Health Care Plan. Cost of healthcare for all Americans is coming down under my plan. We will stop all payments to big insurance and give the money directly to the people, who will then be able to buy better health care at a much lower cost and keep the money and keep the difference.

We’ll have maximum price transparency and require all prices to be posted in plain, beautiful English, and we will get insurance companies to disclose their profits and how many claims they deny, so that we know the good ones from the bad. But the relief begins with refunding everyone who was overcharged. The rebates are going out in just a few weeks. Thank you very much.

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Taxpayers Lost $65 Billion On Obamacare Fraud Last Year

Taxpayers spent $65 billion on health insurance premiums for people who either didn’t exist or didn’t qualify for benefits in two federal programs in 2024, according to an Aug. 26 report from Paragon Health Institute.

Expanded Medicaid and Obamacare, the signature programs of the Affordable Care Act, improperly enrolled a combined 14.3 million people that year, researchers concluded.

Expanded Medicaid allows states to enroll people making up to 138 percent of the federal poverty level, versus up to 100 percent for traditional Medicaid. That limit was about $35,600 for a family of three in 2024.

Obamacare was open to people earning up to 400 percent of the federal poverty level at that time, about $103,000 for a family of three.

Both programs are administered through the Affordable Care Act Marketplace, with coverage provided by commercial insurance companies.

As Lawrence Wilson details below, via The Epoch Times, researchers estimate that about 34 percent of all Marketplace enrollees in 2024 were either fraudulent, duplicates, or simply didn’t meet the benefit criteria.

And the number went up the next year, researchers said.

“Improper exchange enrollment increased by more than 26 percent from 2024 to 2025 – up to an estimated 6.5 million enrollees,” the report stated.

Enrollment Problems

Researchers studied federal data from surveys, program enrollment, and spending and concluded that more than 9 million Medicaid expansion enrollees in 2024 probably didn’t qualify for the benefit.

Those were likely people whose income was over the limit, did not meet citizenship, immigration, or residency requirements, or should have been enrolled in traditional Medicaid.

With Obamacare, the $0 premium policies made possible during the post-COVID years became a target for fraud, according to Paragon President Brian Blase.

Testifying before Congress in December, Blase said many people were enrolled in the program without their knowledge by unscrupulous insurance brokers, prompting the federal government to send a commission check to them – and premium payments to an insurance company.

These phantom enrollees are detected in part by their lack of activity once enrolled, Blase said.

Also, 28 states had more people enrolled in Obamacare than there were people in the state who met the income requirements.

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ICE Proposes Insurance Coverage For Local Officers Involved In Immigration Arrests

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has proposed an insurance plan to shield local police officers involved in immigration arrests from financial liability if they face allegations of misconduct during those arrests.

A proposal document published Aug. 14 by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) shows the agency intends to pay for liability insurance coverage for state and local law enforcement officers who are trained to perform immigration officer functions.

The plan would allow officers to purchase up to $500,000 in professional liability insurance, which typically covers financial losses, legal defense fees, settlements, and judgments. Officers would be reimbursed up to $250 each year for insurance costs, according to the document.

The proposal also states that ICE intends to hire a contractor to provide outreach, training, and support to its 287(g) partners. The contractor would also be tasked with coordinating professional liability insurance coverage and reimbursement for law enforcement officers, according to the document.

The 287(g) program is a federal partnership that allows ICE to delegate authority to state and local law enforcement officers to perform specified immigration officer functions, including identifying and processing removable illegal immigrants who have criminal charges.

ICE is seeking industry feedback on the proposal by Aug. 20, according to the DHS’s notice.

The proposal comes as the Trump administration has intensified its immigration enforcement efforts nationwide, with ICE playing a major role.

A notice published on Aug. 10 by DHS showed that ICE also planned to provide its agents new gloves, known as CTG-5 G.L.O.V.E, or Generated Low Output Voltage Emitter, which can deliver electric shocks.

A DHS spokesperson told The Epoch Times by email on Aug. 12 that ICE aims to ensure that its officers have the tools and equipment they need to safely arrest and remove “criminal illegal aliens” from the country.

“Every decision is made with careful consideration and appropriately reviewed to ensure that any technology ICE utilizes is consistent with all applicable law enforcement policies and standards,” the spokesperson said.

“Our officers are highly trained in de-escalation tactics and regularly receive ongoing use of force training.”

The Democratic National Committee’s Resolutions Committee on Aug. 13 approved a resolution that calls for the abolition of ICE. The resolution cited the deaths of ICE detainees and allegations of poor conditions at detention facilities.

Natalie Baldassarre, the national press secretary for the Republican National Committee, criticized the resolution, saying that Democrats should prioritize the safety of Americans. Baldassarre also said the Trump administration’s enforcement efforts have mostly targeted illegal immigrants accused or convicted of crimes.

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Mark Walter Probe Puts Wall Street’s Insurance-Private Credit Machine Under DoJ Scrutiny

An ongoing federal investigation into billionaire Mark Walter’s business empire is raising alarm bells about Wall Street’s use of insurance capital to finance private credit and other illiquid investments. 

Bloomberg reported that Walter’s TWG Global holding company said in a filing that it will wind down its exposure to affiliated businesses by up to $6.5 billion after the transactions drew scrutiny from federal investigators. This comes after the Department of Justice homed in on loans that should’ve been marked as affiliated transactions. 

Walter’s TWG Global holding company will buy up to $6.5 billion of affiliated assets from Delaware Life Insurance Co. in exchange for an equal amount of unaffiliated investments. Clear Spring Life and Annuity Co., another TWG-controlled insurer, separately reduced related-party transactions by $90 million.

The moves begin unwinding more than $20 billion of loans and investments that the insurers acknowledged should have been classified as affiliated transactions. 

“Tripping over these requirements can constitute fraud,” said Derek Reisfield, co-founder and former chairman of MarketWatch, as well as a former McKinsey consultant, who was quoted by The New York Post. 

Reisfield said that heavy exposure to businesses connected to an insurer’s owner poses a very high risk. 

“The risk is that concentrated loans to related parties go south, and the insurance companies and their policyholders can’t be made whole,” Reisfield said, adding, “It’s bad risk management and leaves the companies vulnerable.”

Last week, Walter agreed to sell the Los Angeles Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at a record $12.5 billion valuation, and earlier this week, a report stated that he is mulling over selling his stake in Chelsea Football Club to the majority owner, Clearlake Capital. 

Insurance companies are allowed to do business with related parties, but such dealings must be disclosed and properly labeled to ensure that owners do not put their interests ahead of those of policyholders. 

The investigation into Walter’s empire is a major wake-up call about Wall Street’s use of insurance capital to finance private credit and other illiquid investments. 

Walter was one of the earliest adopters of the strategy of acquiring insurers and investing their long-term policyholder capital in higher-yielding private assets. A number of other asset managers, including Apollo, KKR, and Brookfield, have followed suit by building out insurance operations. Private-capital firms now manage more than $1 trillion of insurance assets.

“We have always acted in good faith, and insinuations that we have in any way attempted to circumvent our obligations are simply false,” a TWG spokesman told The Wall Street Journal. 

More problems: Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners, saw a financing entity tied to the investment firm report a sharp decline in second-quarter earnings, driven by the delayed recognition of advisory fees. The disclosure sent the entity’s term loan tumbling below 80 cents on the dollar.

To sum up, the affiliated transactions were not inherently illegal, provided they had regulatory approval. That appears to be where the process broke down in Walter’s case.

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Why The Trump Administration Was Right To End The Medicare Part D Insurer Bailout

he Trump administration’s recent decision to end a temporary Part D subsidy program in 2027 attracted much press attention, and some criticism. The California Democratic Party claimed on  X that “25 million people, mainly seniors, count on Medicare Part D to afford their prescriptions. Donald Trump is putting their health on the line by ending the program.”

This is  absurd—and false. The Trump administration is not  ending the Part D program (established by Congress in 2003) and couldn’t do so even if it wanted to. However, it is ending a temporary and extralegal bailout program that provided billions of dollars in subsidies to insurers. That’s because Democrats made changes to the program that have cost far more than they claimed.

The Bailout, Explained

In summer 2024, the Biden administration announced a unilateral  “premium stabilization demonstration.” The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) noted the new program would start at the2025 plan year. This was just in time for premium announcements to land in seniors’ mailboxes just prior to the November 2024 election.

The program came into effect largely due to Democrats’ Inflation (Reduction) Act. That law shifted and restructured costs Part D insurers had to pay. It also reduced seniors’ out-of-pocket expenses on prescription drugs. The latter change will, all else equal, result in higher spending, because seniors will consume more and more costly drugs if they  have to pay for fewer or none of their own costs.

The IRA already included one “stabilization” mechanism in a statute running through 2029, intending to minimize any premium increases. But, after seeing preliminary plan bids for 2025, CMS effectively admitted this lone bailout would be insufficient to prevent large spikes in premiums or insurer exits. 

So it conjured a second, unilateral bailout to minimize any potential disruptions. Of course, as I noted at the time, this also amounted to using taxpayer funds to prevent Kamala Harris from suffering a big political controversy in the days leading up to the presidential election.

Unsustainable Costs

As the Washington Post wrote in a recent editorial, these “subsidies have helped keep premiums down but simply by shifting more of the cost on to the federal government,” rather than lowering costs. Indeed, while seniors traditionally paid 25.5 percent  of Part D benefit costs via premiums, this year seniors are paying only about half that amount, or 13 percent.  Taxpayers foot the bill for roughly seven in eight dollars of program spending (87 percent).

The IRA bailouts resulted in $40 billion in additional taxpayer spending in 2025 and 2026, and the costs will add up even more in coming years. I noted recently that this year’s Medicare trustees report increased the long-term cost of the Part D program by roughly one-third, or $5 trillion, compared to the 2025 trustees report.

Justifiable Action

Given these skyrocketing costs, it makes perfect sense to end the Biden administration’s unilateral bailout. Because the IRA’s major changes took effect in January 2025, insurers now have enough actuarial information (i.e., plan claims) to price their products without uncertainty leading to major variations in premiums. 

Eliminating one bailout—remember, the statutory bailout remains in effect through 2029—may increase Part D premiums slightly. But CMS noted that the majority of enrollees will either face no change or a decline in premiums (25 percent), or an increase of under $10 per month (30 percent). Given that taxpayers will still pay a greater share of Part D costs than before the IRA and premiums have fallen by more than one-third in inflation-adjusted terms over the past 15 years, Part D still represents a good value for seniors.

By ending the Biden administration’s unilateral insurer bailout, the Trump administration served as a smart steward of scarce taxpayer dollars, while restoring more of a competitive balance to Part D. False scaremongering by the left aside, the action will help to preserve a Medicare program that faces significant solvency concerns.

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A Million Obamacare Users Enrolled Without a Social Security Number

Obamacare is expensive, unconstitutional, socialist, and bloated. It is also — surprise, surprise — riddled with fraud.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Administrator Mehmet Oz revealed the stunning number of Obamacare users who never provided a Social Security number, raising serious questions about the scope of fraud in the government healthcare insurance program.

In a Saturday video, Kennedy and Oz updated the American people on efforts to uncover and root out fraud. The HHS secretary began, “The Obamacare marketplace is plagued by fraud, in large part because the Biden administration dismantled basic program integrity guardrails. [And] partisan lawfare blocked common sense efforts to protect taxpayers. Today, Dr. Oz and I are exposing one of the latest examples of fraud that we’ve uncovered — more than a million people enrolled in Obamacare without Social Security numbers on file. That is a glaring warning side of fraud. If even a single person was on Obamacare with no Social Security number, we should have found out. Why are we paying people we don’t know if they actually exist?” Why indeed. Probably because Democrats love to redistribute money no matter how many criminals benefit.

Oz picked up the thread of the explanation. “Shady insurance agents and other bad actors have been getting paid to enroll unsuspecting Americans in health plans they never signed up for,” he exclaimed. “These rogue agents have been flooding into healthcare.gov. That’s the Obamacare marketplace. They submit applications for fake people, enroll stolen identities, all to collect millions of dollars, improper fees, from insurance companies for selling plans they never legitimately sold. Some of these agents refuse to follow basic rules like providing their clients’ Social Security number. That, my friends, is a huge red flag.”

Under the current administration, HHS and CMS are actually paying attention to red flags. As Kennedy said, “These fraudsters deliberately pick plans with no premiums. No premiums means no bill. No bill means most people never know that they’ve been enrolled in a plan that you and I are paying for with our taxpayer dollars. The only people who benefit are the fraudsters.”

But the current administration has a zero tolerance attitude toward fraud, Oz emphasized. “So here’s what we’re doing about it,” he said. “In May, we took swift action to block this fraudulent behavior directly on healthcare.gov and to our marketplace Call Center. If an agent wants to be paid, [he] must follow the rules. No ifs, ands or buts. They are gonna have to provide government-verified information for their clients to be enrolled.”

This effort is bearing fruit, Kennedy stated. “Thanks to this aggressive enforcement strategy, we’ve already eliminated thousands of fraudulent policies, and we’re just getting started. We’re also working with insurers to cancel every policy that should never have been issued and recover every taxpayer dollar that was fraudulently paid out,” he assured Americans.

Oz agreed, “We’re also scaling up our enforcement efforts to prevent these bad actors from finding new ways to manipulate the system ahead of the open enrollment system this fall, because we know that bad actors don’t simply stop when you cut off one vulnerable area. The Biden administration let healthcare fraudsters run wild. Thanks to President Trump, those days are over.” The battle is ongoing, but there have already been victories.

Kennedy warned, “To every unscrupulous insurance agent and fraudster exploiting the American people, here is our message. If you steal from the American taxpayer, or if you defraud American families, HHS will find you, and we will hold you accountable.” Oz chimed in, “If you’re a fraudster, here’s our advice to you. Do not walk away from us, run, because we are gonna find you.”

Secretary Kennedy stated that his priority is protecting Americans’ health and Americans’ money, now and always.

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Obamacare Fraud Estimated To Cost $25 Billion This Year: Report

Taxpayers will foot the bill for up to $25 billion in improper Obamacare payments due to organized fraud and improper enrollments in 2026, according to a June 3 report from Paragon Health Institute.

Some 6.2 million enrollments in the healthcare exchanges during the most recent open-enrollment period were improper, the report said, accounting for 27 percent of all enrollments.

The conservative think tank has studied fraud in the Obamacare program since 2024.

The problem of improper enrollments persists despite recent attempts to curtail it, and appears to involve organized efforts by unscrupulous insurance brokers, the report concluded.

Meanwhile, some industry groups have criticized the findings.

Incentives For Fraud

Obamacare’s premium subsidies, which cover 100 percent of the health coverage policy for many beneficiaries, and referral bonuses offer an incentive for both enrollees and brokers to abuse the system, the report concluded.

Researchers identified improper enrollments by comparing Obamacare data to Census Bureau population estimates. The improper enrollments were calculated by a state-by-state comparison of enrollments in the lowest income category to the number of people having that income level in the state.

The lowest income category is 100 percent to 150 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $16,000 to $24,000 per year for an individual or about $27,000 to $41,000 for a family of three.

Enrollees with incomes at that level receive the highest subsidies. During the 2026 open enrollment period, 29 percent of enrollees chose a plan with a $0 premium.

That gives enrollees and the agents who sign people up for Obamacare an incentive to misstate their income, the report concluded.

The American Hospital Association has said Paragon’s research results are not valid due to flawed methodology. “The Census uses different income and household size definitions than the Marketplace so there is no possibility of the data matching,” the group said in an August 2025 statement. The association also said the Census relies on reported income but Obamacare asks for projected income.

The total value of Obamacare subsidies to be paid in 2026 is $88 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Agents who enroll individuals or families in Obamacare earn a commission averaging around $20 per enrollee per month for as long as the policy is active.

Obamacare received more than 23 million enrollments during the 2026 open enrollment period.

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