USA TODAY International Edition
New tool in GOP war on Obamacare: hearings
Oversight pressures administration, gives access to information
WASHINGTON Republicans have tried 46 times to repeal all or part of the Affordable Care Act. They’ve challenged it in court and at the ballot box, and even shut down the government in an attempt to delay it.
Their most recent tactic has also been their most effective: congressional oversight.
Congress has held five hearings on the law since the health insurance exchanges launched on Oct. 1. Two more hearings are scheduled for this week. There have been four subpoenas, and dozens of requests for information that have yielded nearly daily revelations.
Among them: that the website HealthCare. gov broke down after only 1,100 users tried to create accounts; that paper applications for insurance were stuck in the same process as the online applications; and that there were only five documented enrollments in the District of Columbia’s exchange in October.
The House Ways and Means Committee has issued two subpoenas in the past 10 years. Both were related to the Affordable Care Act — including a subpoena last week for raw data on enrollments through federal exchanges.
The ranking Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Sandy Levin, D- Mich., complains that the GOP’s “obsession” with Obamacare is preventing anything else from getting done.
“I’m all in favor of oversight. This isn’t oversight to make things better. This is oversight to make sure things get worse,” he said. Sarah Swinehart, a spokeswoman for the Republicans on the committee, said the oversight is part of members’ representational duty.
“Everybody has constituents. Everybody’s getting questions,” she said. Whereas the debate over heath insurance was theoretical before, “now it’s part of people’s lives, and these decisions are starting to affect everyone,” she said.
Under Chairman Darrell Issa, R- Calif., the Oversight Committee has become known for politically polarizing investigations into a Mexican “gun walking” operation, the attack on the U. S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya, and the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of political groups — usually but not always conservative — for extra scrutiny.
Those investigations have often lasted a year or more. But the Affordable Care Act is a law with various provisions rolling out over several years, giving Republicans dozens of opportunities to hold continuing oversight. “How often is it that government adds a gigantic new entitlement program?” said Issa spokesman Frederick Hill. “If there’s a road map, it’s where the program unrolls.”
In January, for example, the panel may look into people who thought they had signed up for insurance but are not getting the benefits they were promised, Hill said.
Wednesday, the oversight committee will hold a hearing on the problems with the HealthCare. gov rollout. Witnesses include five top government information technology officials, including the White House’s chief technology officer, Todd Park, who was subpoenaed.
Angela Canterbury, the director of public policy for the Project on Government Oversight, said hearings focus attention on problems. “There’s a legitimate need for some scrutiny and some pressure,” she said. “You want to get attention to the issue. Yes, some of these hearings are highly charged and political, and those are the ones that get into the newspapers.”