July Third Obamacare Schadenfreude

Feds: Celebrate the Fourth By Reciting Obamacare Talking Points to Your Family

The Department of Health and Human Services is asking Americans to celebrate the anniversary of our country’s independence from a tyrannical government by reciting government-approved talking points about the wisdom of the president’s healthcare policies. From the HHS website:

This Fourth of July, families across the nation will gather around hot dogs (or their favorite vegetarian alternative) and potato salad to spend some quality time together, watch fireworks and reflect on the holiday’s meaning. But as much as we love our families – and we do, seriously –we don’t always agree when it comes to current events, like last week’s Supreme Court decision upholding tax credits that help make insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) more affordable for millions of people.
Misinformation about the ACA is everywhere, and there’s been a lot of money spent to spread that misinformation – as much as half a billion dollars in ads, according to one 2014 estimate. Not surprisingly, many Americans still don’t know how changes the law made to insurance and the health care system can help improve their lives.
You should be prepared when Aunt Janine says something like, “Obamacare hasn’t helped anyone!” So here are a few points to remember during this long holiday weekend. . .

Say "uncle"

Situation: Before reaching for another burger, your uncle mentions he’s been meaning to get a blood pressure screening he’s been putting off.

You say: Thanks to the ACA, most health plans must now cover recommended preventive services like annual checkups, flu shots and screenings at no out-of-pocket cost.

Full list of suggested propaganda points here.

Hey, at least they didn't show Pajama Boy sipping hot chocolate.

Chaffetz to Oregon: say… you used a lot of fed tax money on that Obamacare site, didn’t you?

Back in May, the Washington Times reported that Cover Oregon (the Oregon Obamacare exchange) had flushed more than $300M in federal funding into their problematic system before then Governor John Kitzhaber scrapped the program, likely to avoid even more questions about his administration’s financial activities. Since we’ve heard no more about it in the intervening time I’d assumed that this was just more taxpayer money down yet another rathole. (Hardly newsworthy anymore, sadly.) But this week the Times is back with an update and somebody in Congress apparently noticed the Oregon money pit and would like a word with a few folks in in the Pacific Northwest.

A key House oversight panel is demanding that the Department of Health and Human Services turn over all documents related to the failed Cover Oregon health care information exchange, which was abandoned last year after the state spent an estimated $300 million of federal grant money to build it.

The June 15 letter from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform seeks all communication between employees for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) about the Oregon site, all documents related to the site’s functioning, and a description of changes CMS made to its processes on grants and information technology related to federal and state Obamacare websites.
The letter signed by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Utah Republican and the panel chairman, notes that despite Cover Oregon having cost hundreds of millions only to be scrapped and have the state’s Obamacare customers turned over to the federal healthcare.gov site, CMS in February 2011 “identified Oregon as an ‘early innovator,’ one of only seven states granted large sums of federal dollars to design reusable IT systems in hopes of providing a state-based exchange model for other states to follow.”

The question is whether or not we get our money back if it was knowingly dumped to no purpose or to something corrupt. While it’s not all that common, there is precedent aplenty for states being forced to pay back inappropriately allocated funds. Fairly recently Wisconsin was facing paying back federal grant money for for an economic development scheme which was supposed to lure a new employer to the state. The deal never went through and Wisconsin was on the hook for it. There are other examples, including many in New York for similarly failed programs.

Of course the Obama administration will not hold Oregon accountable for blowing three hundred million dollars in attempting to implement a poorly drafted law.