Report: ACA must be better managed

WASHINGTON — A congressional watchdog said Thursday the Trump administration needs to step up its management of sign-up seasons under former President Barack Obama’s health care law after mixed results in the throes of a failed GOP effort to repeal it.

The report from the Government Accountability Office is likely to add to Democrats’ election-year narrative that the administration actively undermined “Obamacare” without regard for the consequences to consumers.

The nonpartisan GAO was more nuanced. On one hand, it found problems with consumer counseling and advertising and recommended such basic fixes as setting enrollment targets. On the other, it credited administration actions that did help people enroll, such as a more reliable HealthCare.gov website.

Sign-ups for 2019 begin in November. The report found that:

The Health and Human Services Department under Trump broke with its own previous practice by failing to set enrollment targets for last year. The watchdog recommended that the department resume setting goals, a standard management tool for government agencies. Without setting numeric goals, Health and Human Services won’t be able to measure whether it is meeting “its current objective of improving Americans’ access to health care,” the report said.

Health and Human Services used “problematic” and “unreliable” data to justify a 40 percent cut in funding for enrollment counseling programs known as Navigators. The department responded that it’s making changes to how those counseling programs are evaluated. But it has cut funding again, by about 70 percent.

When Health and Human Services slashed money for openenrollment advertising by 90 percent overall, officials said they were doing away with wasteful spending. But a study by the department had actually found paid television ads were one of the most effective ways to enroll consumers.