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ACA FRAUD ALLEGATIONS USING TERMINOLOGY “PHANTOMS”
—WATCH OUR FOR ALTERNATIVE TERMINOLOGY—-
—GEOGRAPHICAL VARIATION?
— UNIFORM TERMINOLOGY IN PROCESS?
As in two recent posts of mine:
This latest one, on a 6/26/26 CMS report making identifiably incorrect claims that all of the the many millions in coverage drops after the 1/1/26 lapse of the ACA expanded subsidies are due to the administration’s successful crackdown on fraud:
paralleling Jonathan Cohn’s (bulwark-paywalled) post referencing that that same 6/25/26 CMS report:
And a slightly earlier post of mine before the release of the 6/26/26 CMS report, but after an early-June-2026 release of a report alleging rampant ACA fraud from the Paragon Health Institute:
paralleling Jonathan Cohn’s (bulwark-paywalled) post with the same pre-6/26/26 post early-June-2026 Paragon Health Institute report alleging rampant fraud with the ACA:
there is, in all cases—both the CMS 6/26/26 report and the early-June Paragon Health Institute report heavy reliance on the term “PHANTOM” for a certain kind of alleged-fraud case.
The term “phantom” will, of course, stick around until at least the mid-term elections coming in four or so months, but
TO AVOID GETTING ALL CONFUSED EVERYONE PLEASE NOTE a slightly different term, "GHOST", is sometimes used.
So, for example, here:
is Republican Sen. Roger Marshall, of Kansas, using it. He says, in bringing up his "novel idea":
"Get this. 35 to 40% of Obamacare recipients that are enrolled in Obamacare never file a claim. Let me say that again. There’s 24 million people on Obamacare. 35-40% of those people never file a claim. These are ghost people. They don’t even know they’re on Obamacare."
Coastal elites will please have the decency to refrain from the thought that Sen. Marshall changed “phantom” to “ghost” because he thinks most people in Kansas don’t know what the word “phantom” means.
However, I think it is fair game to wonder if Marshall himself knew what the term meant when handed the Republican propaganda packet, and had to look it up himself.
Never mind that last question. The important thing to note is that, it appears we have a GEOGRAPHICAL VARIANT: “GHOSTS”
But, also, I have viewed a Dr. Oz on Fox video and caught this:
where we see that Dr. Oz uses the term "ghosts", not "phantoms".
So, obviously, in a nationally-directed broadcast, they have to use "ghost", if the MAGA people in half the states don’t know what “phantom” means.
Thus, we theorize: UNIFORM TERM ALL STATES AND NATIONALLY: “GHOSTS”?
In any case, we should not be so foolish as to stop at is what has been empirically observed.
We can all reasonably anticipate, in the coming four or so months before the midterms, both additional variants:
"Obamacare is haunted"
and
"Obamacare is haunted by the ghosts of the people who were killed by the Obama Death Panels".
But, it does not end there. If you check the latest of the Jonathan Cohn posts, the top one, above, you see he indicates now there seems to be coming some “Trump Death Panels”, analogous to what were the “Obama Death Panels” 15 or so years ago.
So now we really have to look out for all five terms or expressions for the same thing:
“Phantoms”
“Ghosts”
"Obamacare is haunted"
"Obamacare is haunted by the ghosts of the people who were killed by the Obama Death Panels".
and "Obamacare is haunted by the ghosts of the people who were killed by the Obama Death Panels but their ain't no Trump Death Panels".*
—
Yes, it is very confusing, and you have the Republicans and the Trump administration and Dr. Oz to thank for that.
And, fortunately, you have me, and this note, so that if you get confused about any of the terms, you can just come to this note.
Glad to be of service!
—
*Addendum:
If you can make it behind a Bulwark Substack Paywall, you might see there is evidence ( thebulwark.com/p/donald… ) of even a sixth “synonym” coming:
"Obamacare is haunted by the ghosts of the people who were killed by the Obama Death Panels but their ain't no Trump Death Panels but there are Krugman Death Panels and the Krugman Substack is haunted by the ghosts of the comments that were killed by the Krugman Death Panels."