Police State: The administration is building a
detective squad that will target consumers and companies that don't
follow ObamaCare's rules. The game of "good cop, bad cop" has arrived
in American health care.
It was bad enough to know that an Internal Revenue Service that targets the political opponents of the Obama administration between partying on the taxpayer dime would be in charge of monitoring compliance with ObamaCare's individual mandate via our tax returns.
Now, the Daily Mail, which lodged a Freedom of Information Act with Health and Human Services, reports that the agency has hired a bevy of criminal investigators as we continue to learn what is in the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act.
Never did we imagine that buying insurance and going to the doctor or providing coverage to employees would come under the full-time purview of federal criminal investigators.
On the day in 2010 that President Obama signed the bill into law, HHS got authority from the Office of Personnel Management to make as many as 1,814 new hires under an emergency "Direct Hiring Authority" order.
The agency was authorized to hire 50 criminal investigators to ensure compliance with mandatory provisions and regulations. But as is typical with an administration with no respect for the Constitution and the law, HHS unilaterally upped that number to 86.
Of course these investigators won't be digging into the Obama administration's lack of compliance with its own law. A president doesn't have the legal authority to decide what parts of the law he wants to obey; the Constitution does not grant him that authority.
But that's exactly what Obama is doing with Obama-Care.
It was bad enough to know that an Internal Revenue Service that targets the political opponents of the Obama administration between partying on the taxpayer dime would be in charge of monitoring compliance with ObamaCare's individual mandate via our tax returns.
Now, the Daily Mail, which lodged a Freedom of Information Act with Health and Human Services, reports that the agency has hired a bevy of criminal investigators as we continue to learn what is in the Orwellian-named Affordable Care Act.
Never did we imagine that buying insurance and going to the doctor or providing coverage to employees would come under the full-time purview of federal criminal investigators.
On the day in 2010 that President Obama signed the bill into law, HHS got authority from the Office of Personnel Management to make as many as 1,814 new hires under an emergency "Direct Hiring Authority" order.
The agency was authorized to hire 50 criminal investigators to ensure compliance with mandatory provisions and regulations. But as is typical with an administration with no respect for the Constitution and the law, HHS unilaterally upped that number to 86.
Of course these investigators won't be digging into the Obama administration's lack of compliance with its own law. A president doesn't have the legal authority to decide what parts of the law he wants to obey; the Constitution does not grant him that authority.
But that's exactly what Obama is doing with Obama-Care.