Conservative Blogger
Wednesday, July 2, 2014
ObamaCare coverage for millions in jeopardy as watchdog finds widespread data flaws
Though the system's troubles have faded from the headlines since the problem-plagued launch last October, a report from the health department inspector general provided the first independent look at widespread issues the government is having effectively fact-checking the information applicants are putting in the system.
According to the report, the administration was unable to resolve 2.6 million so-called "inconsistencies" out of a total of 2.9 million such problems from October through December 2013.
The government needs to determine applicants' eligibility in order to verify they can enroll and, in some cases, get government subsidies. Without that step, coverage could be jeopardized. Critics fear these issues also could cause chaos during the 2015 tax-filing season, as many would have to pay back subsidy money they were not entitled to.
According to the report, those running the federal marketplace are having trouble resolving problems "even if applicants submitted appropriate documentation."
"The federal marketplace was generally incapable of resolving most inconsistencies," the report said, claiming the government could not resolve 89 percent of the problems.
And of the roughly 330,000 cases that could be straightened out, the administration had only actually resolved about 10,000 during the period of the inspector general's audit. That worked out to less than 1 percent of the total.
The report said that most of the problems dealt with citizenship and income information supplied by consumers that conflicted with what the federal government had on record. The report said the government's eligibility system was not fully functional.
The data above doesn't even reflect what's happening with the state-run exchanges. According to the same report, four of the 15 state marketplaces reported they were "unable to resolve inconsistencies." They are: Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon and Vermont.
The findings come after President Obama celebrated 8 million sign-ups as proof that technical problems which initially kept many consumers from enrolling had finally been overcome. It now turns out that some of those problems continued out of sight. The inspector general said the efforts of the administration and states to clear up the discrepancies were complicated by lingering computer issues.
The issue is one of the top challenges facing newly installed HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell.
Republicans pointed to this and one other IG report -- which questioned internal safeguards for checking eligibility -- as evidence the system still is not working, and fraudulent payments could be made.
"This report is one more example of just how flawed the president's health care law is," Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell said in a statement. "Whatever one's opinion of ObamaCare, the American public deserves to know that their tax dollars are allocated appropriately and that public officials take their responsibility to accurately and faithfully apply the laws enacted by Congress seriously."
Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., said the system has allowed "millions of Americans to enroll in a system that may be handing them the wrong subsidies -- too much or too little -- and they've left taxpayers vulnerable to fraud."
But White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest downplayed the findings.
"Resolving those inconsistencies is important, but isn't necessarily complicated and doesn't necessarily indicate any sort of problem with the application that someone has filed," he said Tuesday.
The report was requested by congressional Republicans as a condition of ending the budget standoff that triggered a partial government shutdown last fall. Republicans say they are concerned that people who are not legally entitled to the law's government-subsidized private health insurance could nonetheless be getting it.
The inspector general stopped short of drawing such conclusions.
"Inconsistencies do not necessarily indicate that an applicant provided inaccurate information ... or is receiving financial assistance through insurance affordability programs inappropriately," the report said.
However, the watchdog office called on the administration to publicly explain how and by what date it will resolve the data problems in the 36 states where Washington is operating new insurance markets.
In a written response to the report, Medicare chief Marilyn Tavenner said the administration concurs with the recommendations and is working on a plan. Tavenner also said that some of the computer issues that were getting in the way of resolving the problems have now been overcome.
"It is not surprising that there are inconsistencies between some information provided by application filers and the (government's) electronic data sources," she said.
The law provides the administration with the option of extending an initial 90-day period for clearing up discrepancies.
Illegal immigrants already being released to neighborhood near you
The releases have already started and the Border Patrol did not disclose how many. At least 60,000 Central Americans have entered the country illegally this year, though some news reports say the figure is as high as 170,000. An effort is under way to place children in foster homes or with relatives already living in the U.S., said Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas.
The adults are being given a “notice to appear,” something like to a traffic ticket that requires they show up for a deportation hearing. Following that notice, they are simply being released. Those who return for the hearing will face a federal immigration judge to determine their fate.
“You know good and well they won’t show up and we won’t go looking for them,” Gohmert said. “When they get their piece of paper saying report back on such a day at such a time, they take that as their legal permit to stay in the country and they go do what they want.”
A senior Los Angeles County Sheriff’s detective who routinely deals with illegal immigrants said a “massive number – 80 to 90 percent” do not show up for deportation hearings. Detention is not even being considered because Homeland Security facilities are not equipped to hold a large number of people, said the detective, who spoke on a guarantee of anonymity.
Tuesday, July 1, 2014
Medical staff warned: Keep your mouths shut about illegal immigrants or face arrest
Bailey: Knew this was coming!
A government-contracted security force threatened to arrest doctors
and nurses if they divulged any information about the contagion threat
at a refugee camp housing illegal alien children at Lackland Air Force
Base in San Antonio, Texas, sources say.In spite of the threat, several former camp workers broke their confidentiality agreements and shared exclusive details with me about the dangerous conditions at the camp. They said taxpayers deserve to know about the contagious diseases and the risks the children pose to Americans. I have agreed to not to disclose their identities because they fear retaliation and prosecution.
My sources say Americans should be very concerned about the secrecy of the government camps.“There were several of us who wanted to talk about the camps, but the agents made it clear we would be arrested,” a psychiatric counselor told me. “We were under orders not to say anything.”
The sources said workers were guarded by a security force from the Baptist Family & Children’s Services, which the Department of Health and Human Services hired to run the Lackland Camp.
The sources say security forces called themselves the “Brown Shirts.”
“It was a very submissive atmosphere,” the counselor said. “Once you stepped onto the grounds, you abided by their laws – the Brown Shirt laws.”
She said the workers were stripped of their cellphones and other communication devices. Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired.
“Everyone was paranoid,” she said. “The children had more rights than the workers.”
She said children in the camp had measles, scabies, chicken pox and strep throat as well as mental and emotional issues.
“It was not a good atmosphere in terms of health,” she said. “I would be talking to children and lice would just be climbing down their hair.”
A former nurse at the camp told me she was horrified by what she saw.
“We have so many kids coming in that there was no way to control all of the sickness – all this stuff coming into the country,” she said. “We were very concerned at one point about strep going around the base.”
Both the counselor and the nurse said their superiors tried to cover up the extent of the illnesses.
“When they found out the kids had scabies, the charge nurse was adamant – ‘Don’t mention that. Don’t say scabies,’” the nurse recounted. “But everybody knew they had scabies. Some of the workers were very concerned about touching things and picking things up. They asked if they should be concerned, but they were told don’t worry about it.”
The nurse said the lice issue was epidemic – but everything was kept “hush-hush.”
“You could see the bugs crawling through their hair,” she said. “After we would rinse out their hair, the sink would be loaded with black bugs.”
The nurse told me she became especially alarmed because their files indicated the children had been transported to Lackland on domestic charter buses and airplanes.
“That’s what alerted me,” she said. “Oh, my God. They’re flying these kids around. Nobody knows that these children have scabies and lice. To tell you the truth, there’s no way to control it.”
I don't mean to upset anyone's Independence Day vacation plans, but were these kids transported to the camps before or after they were deloused? Anyone who flies the friendly skies could be facing a public health concern.
The counselor told me the refugee camp resembled a giant emergency room – off limits to the public.
“They did not want the community to know,” she said. “I initially spoke out at Lackland because I had a concern the children’s mental health care was not being taken care of.”
She said the breaking point came when camp officials refused to hospitalize several children who were suicidal.
“I made a recommendation that a child needed to be sent to a psychiatric unit,” the counselor told me. “He was reaching psychosis. He was suicidal. Instead of treating him, they sent him off to a family in the United States.”
She said she filed a Child Protective Services report and quit her job.
“I didn’t want to lose my license if this kid committed suicide,” she told me. “I was done.”
The counselor kept a detailed journal about what happened during her tenure at the facility.
“When people read that journal they are going to be astonished,” she said. ‘I don’t think they will believe what is going on in America.”
So it was not a great surprise, she said, when she received a call from federal agents demanding that she return to the military base and hand over her journal.
She said she declined to do so.
“I didn’t go back to Lackland,” she said.
Both workers told me while they have no regrets, they want to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
“They’re going to crush the system,” the nurse told me. “We can’t sustain this. They are overwhelming the system and I think it’s a travesty.”
Baptist Family & Childen’s Services spokeswoman Krista Piferrer tells me the agency takes “any allegation of malfeasance or inappropriate care of a child very seriously.”
“There are a number of checks and balances to ensure children are receiving appropriate and adequate mental health care,” she said.
Piferrer said the clinicians are supervised by a federal field specialist from HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. She also said BFCS have 58 medical professionals serving at Lackland.
“Every illness, whether it is a headache or something more serious, is recorded in a child’s electronic medical record and posted on WebEOC – a real-time, web-based platform that is visible to not only BFCS but the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,” she said.
As for those brown shirts, the BFCS said they are “incident management team personnel” – who happen to wear tan shirts.
My sources say Americans should be very concerned about the secrecy of the government camps.
“This is just the beginning,” one source told me. "It is a long-term financial responsibility.”
HILLARY CLINTON
Obama sending 200 American troops to Iraq to secure US Embassy, airport
President Obama announced Monday that he is sending approximately 200 American troops to Iraq to reinforce security at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and the Baghdad International Airport, as the country wages a bloody battle against jihadists.
The troops will serve a different mission in Iraq than the 275 advisory troops sent to Iraq earlier this month in response to advances by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant/Syria (ISIS). The additional troops will serve to solely augment security.
“The presence of these additional forces will help enable the Embassy to continue its critical diplomatic mission and work with Iraq on challenges they are facing as they confront (ISIS),” Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Admiral John Kirby said in a statement.
Obama notified House and Senate leaders in a letter on Monday. Obama said the additions include security forces, rotary-wing aircraft, and support for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Obama has ruled out sending combat troops back into Iraq, but he said the additional troops will be equipped for combat. He said their purpose is to protect U.S. citizens and property if needed.
Obama said the troops will stay in Iraq until security improves so that the reinforcements are no longer needed.
Fox News' Wes Barrett and The Associated Press contributed to this report
Obama pursuing executive actions on immigration, after House effort stalls
King Obama
The president, speaking in the Rose Garden, said he is forced to go it alone because the House has failed to act on a comprehensive overhaul. He said Speaker John Boehner informed him last week the House will not vote on an immigration bill this year.
"America cannot wait forever for them to act," Obama said. He said he's launching a new effort to "fix as much of our immigration system as I can, on my own, without Congress."
The president's announcement is sure to infuriate congressional Republicans. Obama is pushing for new executive actions in defiance of Boehner's vow last week to pursue a lawsuit against the president over alleged executive overreach. Even before Monday's announcement, Boehner and his colleagues alleged that the president has gone too far in making changes without Congress to immigration policy, the Affordable Care Act, environmental regulations and other issues.
This new push would go further still.
In a written statement, Boehner called Obama's announcement "sad and disappointing," and said executive orders "can't and won't fix these problems."
During his remarks in the Rose Garden, Obama cited the current surge of illegal immigrant children crossing the southern border and said the "crisis" should underscore the need to pass a comprehensive bill. But Boehner claimed that it was Obama's past executive orders -- those easing deportations for some illegal immigrants -- that "have led directly to the humanitarian crisis along the southern border."
Boehner said "additional executive action from this president isn't going to stem the tide of illegal crossings, it's only going to make them worse." He also referred to last week's Supreme Court ruling that Obama overstepped in making recess appointments, saying the court "reminded us" that there are "sharp limits" to presidential power.
As for his conversation last week with the president, Boehner said he only told Obama what he's been saying for months: that until the public and elected officials trust him to enforce the law, "it is going to be difficult to make progress on this issue."
Obama, though, said he would still prefer to seek changes via Congress, and he'd continue to press the House to act.
But for the time being, the president announced two steps. First, he's directed Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson and Attorney General Eric Holder to move "available resources" from the interior to the border to address security. Further, the president said he's directed a team to "identify additional actions my administration can take on our own within my existing legal authorities to do what Congress refuses to do and fix as much of our immigration system as we can."
According to a White House official, those recommendations are due back by the end of the summer.
Obama's decision effectively declares that a broad based change in immigration policy is dead for the year, and perhaps for the remainder of his administration. Changing immigration laws and providing a path to citizenship for about 11 million immigrants in the country illegally has been one Obama's top priorities as he sought to conclude his presidency with a major second-term victory.
Meanwhile, the president is still grappling with the surge of illegal immigrant children and families along the border. Earlier in the day, Obama sent a letter to congressional leaders asking for more flexibility on that front, seeking increased powers to send unaccompanied children from Central America back from the U.S. border to the countries they're trying to flee.
Obama also asked for increased penalties for people who smuggle immigrants who are vulnerable, such as children. And he is asking Congress for emergency money that would, among other things, help conduct "an aggressive deterrence strategy focused on the removal and repatriation of recent border crossers." Obama's letter to Boehner, House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell says the administration is confronting the influx with a coordinated response on both sides of the border.
"This includes fulfilling our legal and moral obligation to make sure we appropriately care for unaccompanied children who are apprehended, while taking aggressive steps to surge resources to our Southwest border to deter both adults and children from this dangerous journey, increase capacity for enforcement and removal proceedings, and quickly return unlawful migrants to their home countries," Obama wrote.
The Border Patrol in South Texas has been overwhelmed for several months by an influx of unaccompanied children and parents traveling with young children from Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador. Unlike Mexican immigrants arrested after entering the U.S. illegally, those from Central America cannot be as easily returned to their countries. Obama is seeking authority to act more quickly
The Border Patrol has apprehended more than 52,000 child immigrants traveling on their own since the start of the 2014 budget year in October.
Immigrant advocacy groups, already frustrated by Obama's lack of executive action to ease record levels of deportations, immediately pounced on the administration's decision.
Marielena Hincapie, executive director of the National Immigration Law Center, said the influx of children across the border "really requires a humanitarian response, not an increase in deportations."
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