Free Republic

The job of Congress is to represent the people and put the nation’s best interests first. It looks like Maxine Waters has a very different objective: Funnel as much taxpayer money to leftist cronies as possible. According to Judicial Watch, the longtime liberal lawmaker has introduced a bill that moves over a billion dollars to “Obamacare navigators,” who conveniently happen to almost always be leftist organizations. “A fraud-infested Obamacare ‘outreach’ program will get an astounding $1.2 billion from American taxpayers if legislation introduced by a veteran congresswoman becomes law,” the watchdog group explained.

When Monica Spalding got the renewal letter from her health insurance company with premium details for the upcoming year, she couldn’t believe her eyes. The insurer estimated that the share of the monthly premium that she and her husband would owe for their marketplace silver plan would go up from the current $28 a month to $545. She immediately called Sharon Barker, a health insurance navigator with Family and Children’s Service in Nashville, Tenn., with whom she and her husband had worked this year to buy a marketplace plan after relocating from California to take care of her husband’s ailing...

The CMS' Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program was an expensive wake-up call. Hospital leaders needed to prevent patients from making a U-turn after discharged. The hospital was hit with a $397,153 penalty. The penalty program established under the Affordable Care Act has motivated hospitals to change care practices. Readmissions have fallen as hospitals respond to penalties that can dock up to 3% of their Medicare payments. (excerpts from article.) But the tactics hospitals have adopted to avoid a penalty might not always be in the best interest of patients. As hospitals reduced readmissions for heart failure mortality rates increased. Financial incentives...

Groups charged with enrolling as many people as possible in Obamacare's insurance marketplaces say the Trump administration didn’t give them credit for signing up thousands more people for Medicaid when the administration dramatically slashed their federal funding this year. The groups known as "navigators," created under the Affordable Care Act to help people obtain coverage, are under fire as Republicans and the Trump administration fight the 2010 law that has provided health coverage to more than 20 million Americans. After attempts to roll back the ACA failed in Congress, Trump's Health and Human Services Department is now targeting the navigators,...

Harold Weber is what’s known as a navigator. He has been helping people choose the right health insurance plan since 2013, when the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Working out of the Athens Neighborhood Health Center, he estimates that he has steered about 1,400 people through the complexities of the federal health insurance exchange for Georgia. Today, as congressional Republicans look to repeal the 2010 health care law and replace with it a different plan, Weber and other navigators wonder if they’ll have jobs a year from now. Weber advises all comers at a federally qualified health center (FQHC),...

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced grant awards totaling $67 million to healthcare navigator efforts over the next three years. The awards come before the upcoming third year of Affordable Care Act enrollment starting November 1, 2015. CMS awarded funds to 100 organizations in 34 states that operate Federally Facilitated Marketplaces and State Partnership Marketplaces with three-year long Marketplace Navigator grants. …

Following Breitbart News’ report about the training immigration activists planned to help illegal immigrants prepare for executive amnesty, the Committee for Immigration Reform Implementation has removed the materials from public view. Thursday, Breitbart News highlighted powerpoint presentations that were set to be used to train what the group is calling “community navigators.” In addition to educating the navigators on various aspects of immigration law and the president’s executive actions, there are slides aimed at defending the programs and amassing power.“Once the applications are out, the best defense of the programs will be huge number of applications for [Deferred Action for Childhood...

President’s Political Junkets Continue Unabated Who is On the Obama Enemies List? Judicial Watch Sues to Find Out. The President from ACORN President’s Political Junkets Continue Unabated It has become a tiresome, tedious – and costly – routine. Hollywood calls with a passel of cash, and President Obama comes running – at great expense to taxpayers – to fill up his political coffers. That’s what we discovered anew after obtaining records from the U.S. Department of the Air Force highlighting yet another Obama fundraising trip to Los Angeles and San Francisco, California. These documents came to us in response to...

he state uses an army of certified agents to guide around 40% of the people who enroll in Covered California, the state’s subsidized health-care system. And like any army, this one would like to get paid. That hasn’t been happening. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that many of the 12,600 insurance agents haven’t been paid for months. Around 2,200 agents are owed around $2 million for shepherding Med-Cal patients through the system and the state doesn’t intend to pay them before January. These are probably the wrong people to piss off at the beginning of Covered California’s second...

Perry Chiaramonte October 04, 2014 A Texas union’s dirty laundry -- aired out in court when workers charged they were cheated out of overtime pay – also shows the labor organization ripped off taxpayers under a $1.3 million contract to sign people up for ObamaCare, a watchdog group is claiming. Non-profit group Southern United Neighborhoods got a $1.3 million federal grant in 2013 to serve as a "navigator," enrolling people in Affordable Care Act coverage. The group subcontracted with United Labor Unions Local 100, which, according to Cause of Action, paid members less than it billed the government and, in...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 12,2014 Contact: ONC Media Relations 202-260-6342 HHS awards more than $295 million in Affordable Care Act funds to increase access to primary care at health centers Funding creates an estimated 4,750 new jobs; Helps newly insured access careHealth and Human Services Secretary Sylvia M. Burwell announced today $295 million in Affordable Care Act funding to 1,195 health centers in every U.S. State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Pacific Basin to expand primary care services.Today’s awards enable  health centers to increase access to comprehensive primary health care services by hiring...

Federal health officials announced $3.2 million in new funding to help racial and ethnic minorities enroll in health coverage under ObamaCare. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Office of Minority Health awarded grants to 13 organizations that will help educate and encourage minority communities to sign up for health plans through the marketplaces.

Planned Parenthood will receive more than half-a-million dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds to help sign people up for ObamaCare health insurance plans during a three month period in 2014-15. For the second year in a row, the Department of Health and Human Services will award two Planned Parenthood chapters in Iowa and Montana federal grants to act as “navigators” for those uninsured or otherwise unable to navigate the labyrinth of new insurance regulations ushered in by the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Planned Parenthood of the Heartland will receive an “anticipated grant” of $218,940 (slightly more than its $214,427 grant last...

The Obama administration is facilitating a series of events at Mexican Consulate to enroll illegals in Obamacare – described as “our responsibility” regardless of citizenship. “Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition-- and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America Field Organizer Jose Medrano told Breitbart News on Wednesday. Health Care insurance navigator groups hosted an Obamacare enrollment fair in the Mexican Consulate’s Brownsville office, The Rio Grande Guardian reported....Mexican nationals among others were counseled about enrolling in the...

The Obama administration has been helping to facilitate a series of events nationwide at Mexican Consulate offices to enroll people in Obamacare – and a key activist says the efforts are “our responsibility” regardless of citizenship. “Whether they’re Mexican nationals or whether they’re United States citizens or whether they’re in transition-- and if they’re there it is our responsibility within all of America to educate on the Affordable Care Act,” Enroll America Field Organizer Jose Medrano told Breitbart News on Wednesday. Health Care insurance navigator groups hosted an Obamacare enrollment fair on Tuesday in the Mexican Consulate’s Brownsville office, The...

Records the Division of Insurance didn’t want reviewed have some disturbing revelations. Nevada’s Division of Insurance must not have wanted consumers to know that at least eight Obamacare navigators it licensed had criminal pasts. National Review and the Las Vegas Review-Journal had to sue the Division to obtain those public records, and navigators’ criminal histories are not the only disturbing fact we discovered. Half of the navigators who’d had run-ins with the law had failed to disclose it on their applications, despite the requirement to do so — but they received Division approval anyway, the records show. And before the...

THE BRIEFING ROOM • THE BLOG THE BLOG TUESDAY, AUGUST 4TH, 2009 AT 6:55 AM Facts Are Stubborn Things Posted by Macon Phillips Opponents of health insurance reform may find the truth a little inconvenient, but as our second president famously said, "facts are stubborn things." Scary chain emails and videos are starting to percolate on the internet, breathlessly claiming, for example, to "uncover" the truth about the President’s health insurance reform positions. In this video, Linda Douglass, the communications director for the White House’s Health Reform Office, addresses one example that makes it look like the President intends to...

The Nevada Division of Insurance must turn over records regarding Obamacare navigators’ criminal histories, Carson City district judge James E. Wilson Jr. ordered yesterday. Unless the division manages to get a stay, it is required to release the public records next week. Joined by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, National Review filed the lawsuit in January after the Division of Insurance refused to turn over any responsive records — that is, records relevant to our inquiry — whatsoever, stonewalling the two publications for weeks. NR filed a records request in Nevada after discovering eleven name-matches between Nevada Obamacare navigators and criminal...

CONGRESSMAN RUBÉN HINOJOSA INVITES THE PUBLIC TO PARTICIPATE IN THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT TWO DAY WORKSHOP THURSDAY FEBRUARY 13 AND FRIDAY FEBRUARY 14 IN MCALLEN Congressman Rubén Hinojosa in conjunction with Get Covered America, MHP, Valley Association for Independent Living (V.A.I.L.), Cognosante, and South Texas Health Systems will have a workshop on February 13 & 14 at the McAllen Public Library. The workshops will offer information and assistance in understanding and enrolling into the ACA. ***Attendees are asked to bring their social security number and W2/Tax return income pay stubs*** "We have had hundreds of families attend our workshops and...

You may recall when Kathleen Sebelius said this, under questioning from Texas Senator John Cornyn: (VIDEO-AT-LINK)Cornyn: “Isn’t it true that there is no federal requirement for navigators to undergo a criminal background check, even though they will receive sensitive, personal information from individuals they help to sign up for the Affordable Care Act?” Sebelius: “That is true. States could add an additional background check and other features but it is not part of the federal requirement.” Cornyn: “So a convicted felon could be a navigator and could acquire sensitive personal information from an individual, unbeknownst to them?” Sebelius: “That is...