Obamacare's track record just got worse http://t.co/1LgFyqfhcf
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 18, 2015In late 2013, when healthcare.gov was a useless, glitchy mess for members of the public, government officials had another, less-noticed problem on their hands.
Everyone knew — many from experience and many from the news coverage — that the website the government had built to connect Americans with subsidized insurance policies did not work very well on the front end for months after its launch. The dirty secret, though, was that the back-end of the site had not even been built — the part that was supposed to make sure subsidies were set properly and insurers received payments on behalf of each customer.
...Only now it is becoming clear how inadequate the agency's preparations had been. On Monday, with little fanfare, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services released a damning report on waste in this part of the Obamacare program. The watchdog office found that between January-April 2014, $2.8 billion went out the door without anyone checking amounts, whether the money was going to the right insurer to pay for the correct person or whether the beneficiary was eligible.
As bad as that sounds, it's actually much worse when you consider how large a share that represents of the program's overall spending during the same period.
