Freedom Line Blog

If you’re looking for talking points to defend the House GOP’s vote to defund ObamaCare today, look no farther than a report released by the chamber’s Government Oversight and Reform committee.

In it, several alarming abuses are described relating to the health law’s controversial “navigators” program. Navigators, CFIF readers will recall, are taxpayer-financed middle men.

Thanks to the House committee’s report, we now know that:

·    The Obama administration has failed to create adequate training standards for Navigators, even though the administration assumes most Navigators will lack prior knowledge of ObamaCare or health insurance markets.

·    Allowing organizations that receive Navigator funding to pay their employees based on the number of individuals they enroll creates an incentive for those employees to provide biased or incomplete information about ObamaCare to maximize enrollment.

·    Despite the statutory requirement that Navigators be free of conflicts of interest, the administration has decided that individuals employed by Navigator organizations will not have to disclose that they are paid per enrollee to individuals with whom they interact.

·    Neither Congress nor an independent entity reviewed the training materials for Navigators, despite the statutory requirement that Navigators provide “fair and impartial information.”

·    Moreover, the incentives that encourage Navigators to maximize enrollment raise the risk of massive fraudulent spending on Medicaid and exchange subsidies for individuals who do not meet eligibility requirements.

·    And get a load of this – Substantial risks remain because the administration decided not to require background checks and fingerprinting of individuals hired by Navigator organizations.

These are just a few of the many, MANY reasons to defund ObamaCare.

Check out the entire report here.