Monday, November 2, 2015
ObamaCare has cancer. And if it’s not treated quickly and aggressively, it will die
Cancer is the proliferation and growth of abnormal
cells that, over time, can invade tissue and cause severe damage to the
body’s organs. It’s often hard to spot in its early stages, but once
it’s detected, it can reach a point of no return if it isn’t treated.
That’s where ObamaCare is today. It has cancer. And if it is not treated quickly and aggressively, it will die.
The cancer started to grow soon after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, but the spread was too slow to display visible damage. But now it’s detectable, and it has started to invade much of the U.S. economy and our health care systems. Here are some of the symptoms:
Declining enrollment numbers. ObamaCare was designed to provide quality health insurance to people who couldn’t afford it – and for a few years we saw a significant number of early adopters. But a disproportionate number of them were people who previously couldn’t buy health insurance because it was too expensive or because the insurance companies wouldn’t cover their pre-existing conditions. After the ACA was passed, they jumped at the chance to get insurance – and there was a benefit for them.
If the government’s marketing efforts are successful and those who are already enrolled don’t drop out, the government predicts that 3 to 4 million people will join the system next year. But the economics that were the basis of financing ObamaCare have already been sliced in half, and there is no plan to compensate for the shortfall that will result.
Rising premiums. In the past few weeks, many state insurance regulators have approved all or most of the premium increases sought by the largest health plans in their states. When ObamaCare went into effect, many of these plans offered low rates, anticipating that they would bring in new customers.
Instead, they dug themselves a very deep hole. The customers they took on were less healthy than they expected, and they cost them much more than they’d anticipated. They priced themselves at an unsustainable rate, and now they can’t dig out because the projected number of new members has been cut in half.
You don’t need a math degree to know what a company facing this kind of loss will do to stay afloat: It will raise its prices. This change in market dynamics also has fueled a consolidation in the insurance industry, which will result in decreasing competition that will face a lot of resistance and could drive costs even higher.
The demise of the co-ops. Health care cooperatives – non-profit alternatives to for-profit insurers – were designed to drive more competition among insurers and provide more choices for consumers, especially in places where those choices are limited.
The government set aside billions of dollars in loans to prop up these co-ops, but many have failed in the last couple of months because they lacked the infrastructure they needed to market their product and they failed to understand the risk pools of the populations they were insuring.
A major flaw in government budgeting across healthcare.gov, the state exchanges and the co-ops has been the inability to forecast accurately what it will take to make new models work and keep them running. We have seen numerous explosions along the way because of this. The co-ops’ failure could indicate what will happen to underfunded state exchanges, as well.
Another key ObamaCare provision whose outcome is still in limbo is the Accountable Care Organizations, which were set up to improve the efficiencies of care.
The jury is still out on whether ACOs will be able to deliver quality care, but it is very clear that they have not received the money they need to share information across key stakeholders and coordinate care that is truly cost effective.
Employer Backlash. While the number of people without health insurance has gone down in five years from 17.5 percent to 10.7 percent, most of that is due to a vast expansion of Medicaid and to subsidies that help lower-income people buy insurance. Most of the coverage gains did not come from workers getting affordable health care from their employers.
For many employees on or near minimum wage, the plan options their employers offer are still not affordable. And in a bizarre twist, the health care law considers a worker able to afford employer-sponsored insurance if it costs 9.5 percent or less of his annual household income. But how do employers know how much the household income is when they don’t employ the entire household?
In an effort to stay afloat and not pay a penalty, some employers have resorted to coaxing their employees to get coverage from private or public exchanges. But when employees choose to go without coverage, they don’t get the care they need, and that becomes a huge problem for employers when they get sick and don’t show up to work.
At the same time, insurers are becoming increasingly reluctant to offer policies to small employers, since the employees who sign up for the insurance tend to be the ones who are less healthy and cost more. As a result, many insurers have started gaming the system – offering policies for the first year, as required by law, and then using a loophole in the law that allows them not to renew.
The projections of ObamaCare’s success were overestimated. The projections of its cost were underestimated. And we still haven’t found a way to provide health care for everyone at a price that is sustainable and ensures quality care for the long haul. There is a consistent theme in all of this: ObamaCare has cancer, and it’s spreading. Its diseased organs are now surfacing.
It’s time to recalibrate the financing of the Affordable Care Act, subject it to a rigorous analysis of what works and what doesn’t and present a new business plan that American taxpayers can live with.
Dr. Sreedhar Potarazu is an acclaimed ophthalmologist and entrepreneur who has been recognized as an international visionary in the business of medicine and health information technology. He is the founder of VitalSpring Technologies Inc., a privately held enterprise software company focused on providing employers with applications to empower them to become more sophisticated purchasers of health care. Dr. Potarazu is the founder and chairman of WellZone, a social platform for driving consumer engagement in health.
That’s where ObamaCare is today. It has cancer. And if it is not treated quickly and aggressively, it will die.
The cancer started to grow soon after the Affordable Care Act went into effect, but the spread was too slow to display visible damage. But now it’s detectable, and it has started to invade much of the U.S. economy and our health care systems. Here are some of the symptoms:
Declining enrollment numbers. ObamaCare was designed to provide quality health insurance to people who couldn’t afford it – and for a few years we saw a significant number of early adopters. But a disproportionate number of them were people who previously couldn’t buy health insurance because it was too expensive or because the insurance companies wouldn’t cover their pre-existing conditions. After the ACA was passed, they jumped at the chance to get insurance – and there was a benefit for them.
The projections of ObamaCare’s success were overestimated. The projections of its cost were underestimated. And we still haven’t found a way to provide health care for everyone at a price that is sustainable and ensures quality care for the long haul.But look at what’s happening now: The projected number of enrollees for 2016 – 20 million on the federal and state health exchanges – has been cut in half to 10 million, according to Health and Human Resources Secretary Sylvia Burwell. Most of the shortfall is attributed to young, healthier individuals who have decided not to sign up. But their contribution to the system is critical, because it helps cover the losses of the older, less healthy people who participate.
If the government’s marketing efforts are successful and those who are already enrolled don’t drop out, the government predicts that 3 to 4 million people will join the system next year. But the economics that were the basis of financing ObamaCare have already been sliced in half, and there is no plan to compensate for the shortfall that will result.
Rising premiums. In the past few weeks, many state insurance regulators have approved all or most of the premium increases sought by the largest health plans in their states. When ObamaCare went into effect, many of these plans offered low rates, anticipating that they would bring in new customers.
Instead, they dug themselves a very deep hole. The customers they took on were less healthy than they expected, and they cost them much more than they’d anticipated. They priced themselves at an unsustainable rate, and now they can’t dig out because the projected number of new members has been cut in half.
You don’t need a math degree to know what a company facing this kind of loss will do to stay afloat: It will raise its prices. This change in market dynamics also has fueled a consolidation in the insurance industry, which will result in decreasing competition that will face a lot of resistance and could drive costs even higher.
The demise of the co-ops. Health care cooperatives – non-profit alternatives to for-profit insurers – were designed to drive more competition among insurers and provide more choices for consumers, especially in places where those choices are limited.
The government set aside billions of dollars in loans to prop up these co-ops, but many have failed in the last couple of months because they lacked the infrastructure they needed to market their product and they failed to understand the risk pools of the populations they were insuring.
A major flaw in government budgeting across healthcare.gov, the state exchanges and the co-ops has been the inability to forecast accurately what it will take to make new models work and keep them running. We have seen numerous explosions along the way because of this. The co-ops’ failure could indicate what will happen to underfunded state exchanges, as well.
Another key ObamaCare provision whose outcome is still in limbo is the Accountable Care Organizations, which were set up to improve the efficiencies of care.
The jury is still out on whether ACOs will be able to deliver quality care, but it is very clear that they have not received the money they need to share information across key stakeholders and coordinate care that is truly cost effective.
Employer Backlash. While the number of people without health insurance has gone down in five years from 17.5 percent to 10.7 percent, most of that is due to a vast expansion of Medicaid and to subsidies that help lower-income people buy insurance. Most of the coverage gains did not come from workers getting affordable health care from their employers.
For many employees on or near minimum wage, the plan options their employers offer are still not affordable. And in a bizarre twist, the health care law considers a worker able to afford employer-sponsored insurance if it costs 9.5 percent or less of his annual household income. But how do employers know how much the household income is when they don’t employ the entire household?
In an effort to stay afloat and not pay a penalty, some employers have resorted to coaxing their employees to get coverage from private or public exchanges. But when employees choose to go without coverage, they don’t get the care they need, and that becomes a huge problem for employers when they get sick and don’t show up to work.
At the same time, insurers are becoming increasingly reluctant to offer policies to small employers, since the employees who sign up for the insurance tend to be the ones who are less healthy and cost more. As a result, many insurers have started gaming the system – offering policies for the first year, as required by law, and then using a loophole in the law that allows them not to renew.
The projections of ObamaCare’s success were overestimated. The projections of its cost were underestimated. And we still haven’t found a way to provide health care for everyone at a price that is sustainable and ensures quality care for the long haul. There is a consistent theme in all of this: ObamaCare has cancer, and it’s spreading. Its diseased organs are now surfacing.
It’s time to recalibrate the financing of the Affordable Care Act, subject it to a rigorous analysis of what works and what doesn’t and present a new business plan that American taxpayers can live with.
Dr. Sreedhar Potarazu is an acclaimed ophthalmologist and entrepreneur who has been recognized as an international visionary in the business of medicine and health information technology. He is the founder of VitalSpring Technologies Inc., a privately held enterprise software company focused on providing employers with applications to empower them to become more sophisticated purchasers of health care. Dr. Potarazu is the founder and chairman of WellZone, a social platform for driving consumer engagement in health.
Ryan vows 'bottom up' effort to unite GOP but signals no to helping Democrats on immigration, family leave
New House Speaker Rep. Paul Ryan on Sunday renewed his vow to unify congressional Republicans but suggested no compromises with congressional Democrats on their push for immigration reform or passage of a family leave act.
The Wisconsin Republican told “Fox News Sunday” that he would change how House Republicans “do business” by ending the top-down leadership system and said the party needs a more “long-term” vision.
However, Ryan, who was elected Thursday to the speakership post, also called Democrat-backed paid family leave another federal entitlement.
“I don’t think people asked me to be speaker so I can take more money from hard-working taxpayers, so I can create some new federal entitlement,” he said.
Ryan also disagreed with all-out attempts by Washington Democrats in recent weeks to portray him as hypocritical for not supporting family leave legislation but insisting that he’d take the speakership post only if he was able to return to Wisconsin on weekends to be with his young family.
The passage of such legislation -- which would include paid maturity leave for female workers -- has been a priority for 2016 Democratic presidential candidates.
“You deserve quality time with your family,” Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Florida, said at a women’s forum two weeks ago in Washington. “But every mother and father in America deserves that time too. And we Democrats will be loud and clear in calling on you to make paid family leave a priority at the outset of your speakership.”
Ryan said Sunday: “So if you’re asking me, because I want to … continue being the best dad and husband and speaker … means I should sign up for some new, unfunded entitlement, that doesn’t make any sense to me.”
Ryan’s sharpest message for Democrats was perhaps on the issue of comprehensive reform for the U.S. immigration system, led by President Obama.
Ryan, who appeared on the five major Sunday political talk shows, said no such legislation will get passed during the president’s remaining 14 months in office.
“We can’t trust this president on immigration reform,” Ryan told Fox News. “He has already proven untrustworthy because he’s tried to circumvent the legislative process with is executive orders.”
However, Ryan allowed that Democrats and Republicans could achieve consensus on the issues of border security and enforcing fines for violating federal immigration laws. He also said that no immigration-reform bills would reach the House floor unless they have support from the majority of chamber Republicans.
On the issue of uniting the House Republican conference, Ryan told Fox News: “We have to show people where we’re going and what horizon we’re shooting for. I think we’ve been bold on tactics but not on policy.”
Ryan was voted in as new speaker after a tumultuous several weeks in which dissent among the House Republican conference’s most conservative members led to Ohio GOP Rep. John Boehner resigning from the speakership.
Ryan and Republican leaders insist Ryan was recruited for the job and accepted only after forming some consensus with the conservative caucus.
“I cannot pick up where John Boehner left off,” Ryan said Sunday, in the pre-taped Fox News interview. “I can’t do things the same way. We have to do things differently.
Among the concerns raised by the conservative caucus and other rank-and-file members are: their legislation not getting a full floor vote and who gets appointed to lead the committees.
A GOP House member told FoxNews.com on Friday that Ryan agrees that more legislation should come from the committees.
And on Sunday, Ryan, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said, “We need to get Congress working like it was intended to by our founders, a bottom-up, consensus driven process.”
Ryan repeated that he didn’t agree with the process that last week led to the two-year budget deal, which was driven by GOP House leaders, passed with full Democrat support but few Republican votes.
He said the process “stunk” but argued that members had to agree to the proposal, which included spending and borrowing increases, because of critical Nov. 3 and Dec. 11 deadlines.
“We fight over tactics because we don’t have a vision,” Ryan said. “Leadership presented us with a bill a few days beforehand.”
He also dismissed talk that he might have to attack Republicans in the GOP-run Senate for failing, as some argue, to pass legislation coming from the House.
“I don’t think we throw any Republicans under the bus,” Ryan said. “I was not asked to dis-unify the Republican Party in the Congress. … I wasn’t made dictator of the House. I was made speaker of the House.”
Breaking away? GOP campaigns push for debate changes, may hold unsanctioned events
Republican presidential campaigns agreed Sunday to side-step party leaders and try to negotiate directly with television networks over the ground rules for the remaining debates following controversy over last week's CNBC event.
At least one campaign refused to rule out holding debates that are unsanctioned by the Republican National Committee, with Ben Carson campaign manager Barry Bennett saying that he didn't think it would be hard to buy television airtime for such an event.
Representatives from more than a dozen campaigns met behind closed doors for nearly two hours Sunday night in suburban Washington, a meeting that was not expected to yield many results given the competing interests of several candidates. Yet they emerged having agreed to several changes to be outlined in a letter to debate hosts in the coming days.
Bennett said the demanded changes include largely bypassing the RNC in coordinating with network hosts, mandatory opening and closing statements, an equal number of questions for the candidates, and pre-approval of on-screen graphics.
"The amazing part for me was how friendly the meeting was," Bennett said, noting the private gathering was held in a private room marked "family meeting." "Everybody was cordial. We all agreed we need to have these meetings more regularly."
The GOP's most recent debate in Boulder, Colo., on Wednesday night, drew harsh criticism from the campaigns and GOP officials alike. Afterward, some candidates complained that the questions were not substantive enough; others wanted more air time or the chance to deliver opening and closing statements.
"We need to mature in the way that we do these debates if they're going to be useful to the American people," Carson told ABC's "This Week."
While the campaigns agreed to the changes in principle Sunday night, the media companies that host the debates are under no obligation to adopt them. Bennett suggested that campaigns could boycott debates to get their way.
"The only leverage we have is to not come," he said.
The pushback comes despite a high-profile effort by the Republican National Committee to improve the debate process going into the 2016 election season. The party said the 2012 debate schedule promoted too much fighting among candidates, so for 2016, the RNC dramatically reduced the number of debates for this election and played a leading role in coordinating network hosts and even moderators, in some cases.
Three debates remain before the first nomination contest, the Iowa caucuses on Feb. 1; the next one is scheduled for Nov. 10 in Milwaukee. The RNC has sanctioned five debates after the caucuses.
"What it really comes down to is the candidates want to have more control of the ability to negotiate with the networks," Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski said after the meeting.
While organizers of the meeting were not including the RNC, the party has been in regular communication with campaigns about their concerns.
Shortly before the meeting, the RNC appointed Sean Cairncross, the committee's chief operating officer, to take the lead in negotiating with the networks. It's unclear, however, what role he'll play should the campaigns get their way.
"This is the first step in the process of understanding what the candidates want, and then we need to have a more specific conversation about NBC," RNC chief strategist Sean Spicer said Sunday ahead of the meeting. "We need to start a process. Tonight's the first step."
Some candidates are trying to use the debate discord to their advantage -- none more than Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
Campaigning in Iowa this weekend, he slammed the CNBC debate moderators for asking questions in a way that he said "illustrate why the American people don't trust the media." He was cheered after calling for future debates to be moderated by conservatives such as radio host Rush Limbaugh.
'Colossal waste': Watchdog slams $43M, US-funded gas station in Afghanistan
It might be the world's most expensive gas station — not to mention a
gross misuse of taxpayer money, according to a top government watchdog.
The lead oversight team monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan has found the Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost roughly $500,000. The discovery came as part of a broader investigation into allegations of criminal activity within the DOD's premiere program to kick-start the Afghan economy.
"It's fright-night at the Pentagon," John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), told FoxNews.com, calling the spending "outrageous to the taxpayer."
At issue is spending by the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations, known as TFBSO or the Task Force, which ended in March 2015. But most alarming, according to Sopko, is the DOD's failure to answer questions about the $800 million program and its claim the Task Force's employees no longer work for the DOD.
"I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a program," said Sopko, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President Obama in 2012 to watch over spending in Afghanistan.
"Who's in charge? Why won't they talk?" he said. "We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan."
In a report released Monday, SIGAR detailed how TFBSO's Downstream Gas Utilization Project set out to build a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station in the Afghan city of Sheberghan in 2011. The U.S. Geological Survey found in 2006 that northern Afghanistan is rich in natural gas reserves, and the Task Force sought to make the compressed natural gas commercially viable by constructing the facility -- and more broadly, helping to reduce the war-torn country's dependence on costly imported gas.
The Task Force struck a contract with Central Asian Engineering, which received just under $3 million from the U.S. government to construct the Sheberghan gas station. Sopko noted the cost of building a similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan is no more than $500,000.
But the final tab in Sheberghan would turn out to be astronomically higher.
The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station," the U.S. military told SIGAR -- with "approximately $12.3 million in direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."
Who approved all that funding and why are questions the DOD will not answer, according to Sopko.
In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Sopko asked why no one at the DOD could speak about the nearly-billion dollar TFBSO program, which had reported directly to Carter.
"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote. "Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."
Sopko was responding in part to a June 17 letter from Brian McKeon, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy. McKeon had told Sopko in response to earlier questions that "the closure of TFBSO in March 2015 and departure of all its employees have resulted in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) no longer possessing the personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD Executive Archive."
"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense," Sopko told FoxNews.com. "It’s almost like it's pixie dust."
SIGAR said it is unable to determine whether the CNG station in Sheberghan is currently operational. But government documents obtained by the oversight team show that Qashqari Oil and Gas Services -- the business that took over the station in 2014 -- did not renew its business license six months later, in November 2014.
The TFBSO was originally created by the DOD to revitalize Iraq's economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The program was redirected to Afghanistan in 2009 to lead projects supporting economic development.
Sopko said his office has received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity by the Task Force from former employees as well as "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors." He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the accusations.
A review by FoxNews.com shows at least one employee -- Joseph Catalino, the former head of the Task Force -- is still employed by the Defense Department in a senior role.
According to a congressional source, Catalino was in charge of TFBSO in Afghanistan before beginning work in June as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. The DOD's personnel office confirmed Catalino's employment and current job title.
A senior defense official, speaking on background, said Sopko and his
team have access to extensive records archived with Washington
Headquarters Services (WHS), and he disputed any suggestion of a
deliberate effort by the DOD to conceal information.
The official, however, told FoxNews.com he could not name any current DOD employees with detailed knowledge of the gas station project and said decisions made on its construction predated Catalino’s time as head of the Task Force. The official said he did not know whether the gas station was currently functional.
Sopko said billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted to date in Afghanistan. In its quarterly report to Congress, released Friday, SIGAR said the U.S. has provided $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, yet the country remains the world's leading producer of opium.
SIGAR's report on the $43 million gas station spurred outrage among U.S. lawmakers in both parties who called for a thorough investigation into the program's finances.
"There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me."
"It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than 8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," said McCaskill, who penned a letter to Carter on Monday demanding information. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that’s been wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I’ll be thoroughly investigating."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed McCaskill's call for transparency and said, "Under the law, government employees are not authorized to spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices, receiving reports and payment vouchers."
"If those documents don't exist, that's a huge problem," Grassley said. "The Defense Department needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible for a colossal waste of tax dollars."
The lead oversight team monitoring U.S. spending in Afghanistan has found the Department of Defense spent $43 million to build a gas station in Afghanistan that should have cost roughly $500,000. The discovery came as part of a broader investigation into allegations of criminal activity within the DOD's premiere program to kick-start the Afghan economy.
"It's fright-night at the Pentagon," John Sopko, special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR), told FoxNews.com, calling the spending "outrageous to the taxpayer."
At issue is spending by the Task Force for Stability and Business Operations, known as TFBSO or the Task Force, which ended in March 2015. But most alarming, according to Sopko, is the DOD's failure to answer questions about the $800 million program and its claim the Task Force's employees no longer work for the DOD.
"I have never in my lifetime seen the Department of Defense or any government agency clam up and claim they don't know anything about a program," said Sopko, a former federal prosecutor appointed by President Obama in 2012 to watch over spending in Afghanistan.
"Who's in charge? Why won't they talk?" he said. "We have received more allegations about this program than we have received about any other program in Afghanistan."
In a report released Monday, SIGAR detailed how TFBSO's Downstream Gas Utilization Project set out to build a compressed natural gas (CNG) filling station in the Afghan city of Sheberghan in 2011. The U.S. Geological Survey found in 2006 that northern Afghanistan is rich in natural gas reserves, and the Task Force sought to make the compressed natural gas commercially viable by constructing the facility -- and more broadly, helping to reduce the war-torn country's dependence on costly imported gas.
The Task Force struck a contract with Central Asian Engineering, which received just under $3 million from the U.S. government to construct the Sheberghan gas station. Sopko noted the cost of building a similar gas station in neighboring Pakistan is no more than $500,000.
But the final tab in Sheberghan would turn out to be astronomically higher.
The Task Force spent $42,718,739 between 2011 and 2014 to "fund the construction and to supervise the initial operation of the CNG station," the U.S. military told SIGAR -- with "approximately $12.3 million in direct costs and $30 million in overhead costs."
Who approved all that funding and why are questions the DOD will not answer, according to Sopko.
In an Oct. 22 letter to Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, Sopko asked why no one at the DOD could speak about the nearly-billion dollar TFBSO program, which had reported directly to Carter.
"Frankly, I find it both shocking and incredible that DOD asserts that it no longer has any knowledge about TFBSO, an $800 million program that reported directly to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and only shut down a little over six months ago," Sopko wrote. "Nevertheless, I intend to continue our inquiry."
Sopko was responding in part to a June 17 letter from Brian McKeon, the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy. McKeon had told Sopko in response to earlier questions that "the closure of TFBSO in March 2015 and departure of all its employees have resulted in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) no longer possessing the personnel expertise to address these questions or to assess properly the TFBSO information and documentation retained by WHS in the OSD Executive Archive."
"It is totally incredible that you now have a ghost program in the Department of Defense," Sopko told FoxNews.com. "It’s almost like it's pixie dust."
SIGAR said it is unable to determine whether the CNG station in Sheberghan is currently operational. But government documents obtained by the oversight team show that Qashqari Oil and Gas Services -- the business that took over the station in 2014 -- did not renew its business license six months later, in November 2014.
The TFBSO was originally created by the DOD to revitalize Iraq's economy after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. The program was redirected to Afghanistan in 2009 to lead projects supporting economic development.
Sopko said his office has received "numerous allegations" of criminal activity by the Task Force from former employees as well as "current and former uniformed officers who worked over there, other agencies and contractors." He declined to elaborate on the specifics of the accusations.
A review by FoxNews.com shows at least one employee -- Joseph Catalino, the former head of the Task Force -- is still employed by the Defense Department in a senior role.
According to a congressional source, Catalino was in charge of TFBSO in Afghanistan before beginning work in June as a senior adviser in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict. The DOD's personnel office confirmed Catalino's employment and current job title.
Related Image
Expand / Contract
March
10, 2014: Former TFBSO Director Joseph Catalino is seen speaking at an
event at the Afghanistan Embassy in Washington, D.C. (The Embassy of Afghanistan)
The official, however, told FoxNews.com he could not name any current DOD employees with detailed knowledge of the gas station project and said decisions made on its construction predated Catalino’s time as head of the Task Force. The official said he did not know whether the gas station was currently functional.
Sopko said billions of U.S. dollars have been wasted to date in Afghanistan. In its quarterly report to Congress, released Friday, SIGAR said the U.S. has provided $8.4 billion for counter-narcotics efforts in Afghanistan since 2002, yet the country remains the world's leading producer of opium.
SIGAR's report on the $43 million gas station spurred outrage among U.S. lawmakers in both parties who called for a thorough investigation into the program's finances.
"There's few things in this job that literally make my jaw drop," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in a statement to FoxNews.com. "But of all the examples of wasteful projects in Iraq and Afghanistan that the Pentagon began prior to our wartime contracting reforms, this genuinely shocked me."
"It’s hard to imagine a more outrageous waste of money than building an alternative fuel station in a war-torn country that costs more than 8,000 percent more than it should, and is too dangerous for a watchdog to verify whether it is even operational," said McCaskill, who penned a letter to Carter on Monday demanding information. "Perhaps equally outrageous however, is that the Pentagon has apparently shirked its responsibility to fully account for the taxpayer money that’s been wasted — an unacceptable lack of transparency that I’ll be thoroughly investigating."
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, echoed McCaskill's call for transparency and said, "Under the law, government employees are not authorized to spend tax dollars without proper documentation like contracts, invoices, receiving reports and payment vouchers."
"If those documents don't exist, that's a huge problem," Grassley said. "The Defense Department needs to come clean, drop the obfuscation, and hold people responsible for a colossal waste of tax dollars."
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