Obamacare, more than three years in the making but less than two months old in implementation, is already rife with fraud. Investigative reporter James O’Keefe, celebrated and reviled for his takedown of Acorn, today released an explosive video report documenting fraud perpetrated by Obamacare Navigators in Dallas. His allegations are serious and disturbing
We have heard stories over the past weeks about people running scams on Obamacare to bilk money and data out of people trying to enroll in the nearly un-enrollable program. This is typical behavior by scammers and is to be expected. What O’Keefe has revealed is worse by several orders of magnitude.
The Affordable Care Act, combined with tens of thousands of pages of enacting regulations, is so complex and unwieldy that the federal government decided people needed help to figure out how to enroll in health plans under Obamacare. To solve this problem they created Navigators. Employed by activist groups such as the National Urban League and Planned Parenthood, and funded by federal grants, Navigators ostensibly act as a human point of contact to help people figure out how to get insurance under Obamacare.
As Politico explains:
The health care law forbids navigators from actually recommending what specific health plan or coverage people should purchase. They’re only allowed to help people understand their options and they’re banned from receive compensation from insurers, as agents or brokers can.
O’Keefe conclusively demonstrates that federally funded Obamacare Navigators are actively coaching insurance seekers to commit fraud in order to lower their insurance premiums and increase their subsidy benefit. In some cases Navigators are also illegally sharing data they gather with explicitly political groups with close ties to the Obama administration. Specifically they are sharing data with Battleground Texas which is a remnant of the Obama campaign whose goal is to turn Texas blue. This is happening now and it’s happening right here in Texas. And it has to stop.
The O’Keefe report proves that Obamacare opponents were justified in fearing that the Obamacare would be more than simply another big-government entitlement program, but that it would serve a broader political purpose of gathering data helpful to President Obama and his political allies in their electoral strategy.
Under no circumstances should Navigators, federally funded or otherwise, advise their clients to commit fraud. Likewise, Navigators should not be passing data they collect on to explicitly political groups such as Battleground Texas. Using a federal program as a partisan political tool violates the nature and purpose of civil government and undermines the credibility of the entire executive branch of government.
These are criminal actions and they require an exhaustive criminal investigation. Leave no stone unturned. Leave no criminal Navigator unprosecuted. This fraud against the taxpayers must end now.
TLDR Version: Taxpayer funded Obamacare Navigators are coaching insurance seekers to commit fraud and are handing off data to political campaign organizations. All with your tax dollars.