Auditors: Obama administration is bending health law

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Washington Times:

Congress’s non-partisan investigative arm said Wednesday President Obama is stretching the law to give bonuses to mediocre private Medicare plans — an $8 billion program the auditors had already urged the administration to cancel.

In a pointed letter, the Government Accountability Office’s chief lawyer said the administration hasn’t shown that it can learn anything by a “demonstration” project to pay bonuses to average-performing plans in the Medicare Advantage program. The lawyer also questioned “the agency’s legal authority to undertake the demonstration.”

Opponents have said the $8 billion project amounts to a slush fund designed to cover up the Medicare cuts in Mr. Obama’s health care law, at least until 2014 when the law kicks into full effect.

The administration counters that it’s using the money to learn what kinds of incentives can spur private companies to offer better coverage.

The GAO, Congress’s independent auditors, said that’s a stretch, since the demonstration seems designed to produce little useful data and could even reduce incentives for private plans to provide better care.

Because the demonstrations will likely fail, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of her department, don’t have the authority to enact them, GAO said.

“Although CMS stated its expectation that plans will use additional bonus payments to improve the quality of care provided to beneficiaries, it did not address the fact that current Medicare regulations preclude plans’ ability to do so,” GAO General Counsel Lynn H. Gibson wrote.

The administration didn’t reply to a request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

Ms. Sebelius had previously rejected the audit agency’s findings and said her department would move ahead with the demonstration project.

Republican opponents of Democrats’ health law said the GAO letter proves the administration is trying to cover for the law’s cuts to Medicare Advantage, an alternative private plan-based system that provides coverage for about a quarter of all Medicare beneficiaries.

“Lacking the legal authority to undertake a project of this magnitude shows how the Obama administration tried to use a technicality to sidestep Congress and write itself a blank check to spend more money for political purposes leading into this year’s elections,” said Sen. Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, the ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, who has been keeping a close eye on the matter.

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Legal authority has hardly stopped Obama before...