It appears Rep. Darrell Issa’s Oversight Committee is heating up once again. This time the subject is allegations that the Obama administration has provided “serious mismanagement” of the Affordable Care Law’s navigator program.
Furthermore, and more seriously, it has literally placed millions of Americans at risk of having their private information stolen by identity thieves. Yet the law stipulates that all Americans without insurance must sign up or face fines, even though this is occurring.
Desperation on the part of the Obamacare staff has led to unqualified rumors that many of those same people (navigators) are urging potential consumer insurance buyers to lie and commit fraud to qualify for or enhance their government subsidies.
If these allegations are proven true, a whole new litany of criminal complaints lies at the doormat of the White House.
Naturally the navigator program is being defined in an entirely different light by the Obama administration who claims it as helping “guide” consumers through the confusing Obamacare sign-up process, including navigating around the troubled HealthCare.gov website.
This is all at the expense of the American taxpayer.
The damning report was released Monday. It warned that ill-trained “navigators” (basically sales people) are violating their own rules, providing bad advice to applicants about the insurance marketplace and the enrollment process.
Rep. Issa, the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, accused the Department of Health and Human Services of “lacking a contingency plan for the navigator program after HealthCare.gov failed, leaving consumers open to the risk of identity theft” due to confusion surrounding enrollment for health exchanges.”
He continued that “Major problems have plagued the Navigator and Assister programs in the first 10 weeks of enrollment. Poorly-trained navigators gave consumers incorrect information about the healthcare exchanges, violated HHS rules, and even encouraged applicants to commit tax fraud in some instances.”
Although the Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has quietly admitted navigators are not background checked before certification, they can still obtain access to sensitive personal information, including Social Security numbers, date of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and annual income.
This is only the latest instance of information not previously disclosed by either the HHS or the Obama administration.
Rep. Issa has now joined Texas Republican Rep. Pete Sessions to criticize the questionable navigator program in a Monday op-ed in The Dallas Morning News.
In their words, “While President Barack Obama and other allies of Obamacare continue to publicly tout the law, they have done too little to address serious problems that come with it. The American people deserve to know why the administration believes that inadequately trained navigators are qualified to help guide them through such an important process as signing up for healthcare,” they said.
Each day seems to bring another glitch in the ongoing disaster of Obamacare.
