Credit: MedPage Today

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is back under attack. Not as in the repeal-and-replace debates of yore, but in a fresher take from Republican lawmakers who say key parts of the ACA cost taxpayers too much and provide incentive for fraud.

Several House Republican leaders have called on two agencies  to investigate, while Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) fired off more than half a dozen questions in a recent letter to CMS.

At issue are the ACA’s enhanced subsidies, put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic as part of economic recovery legislation. Grassley said in a recent news release  that the subsidies “left Obamacare, a program already riddled with problems, wide open to new waste, fraud, and abuse.”

While potential fraud in government programs has always been a rallying cry for conservatives, the recent criticisms are a renewed line of attack on the ACA because repealing it is unlikely, given that more than 21 million people enrolled in marketplace plans […]

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