Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Oversight Subcommittee have demanded answers from the Obama administration on whether it is requiring states to pay back millions in federal dollars they used to build marketplaces that later failed. The White House spent over $4 billion to fund state efforts to build their own exchanges.
The failure of the state exchanges have been well documented. The crown jewel of disaster was Oregon where a corrupt governor and his political operation pulled the plug on their exchange despite a $200 million investment for fear it was doing political damage to their re-election chances. Nevada and Hawaii's exchanges were a complete bust while Maryland, Minnesota and Massachusetts couldn't get things up and running without major glitches. Republicans became concerned about the perception that the Obama administration was using the federal exchange as a blue state piggy bank. After the federal government paid for Maryland's exchange, the federal government sued and won a signification amount of money -- only to share some of the proceeds with the state even though Maryland never invested a dime into the exchange. Most political observers saw the payment as hush money or an "atta boy" to reward a Blue State for their efforts to build and expand government-run health care.
HHS' Andy Slavitt, was pressed by Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) at a hearing on whether states face any consequences for using federal money in ways that didn't result in successful outcomes.
"They failed but they spent all this money and then said 'gee sorry, it didn't work out,'" Murphy said. "Is that acceptable?"
Callously, Slavitt responded that "States have the right to change their mind for a variety of reasons including technical or otherwise." Slavitt is turning his back on the fraud and corruption in places like Oregon.
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