House Republicans want to remind people of Obamacare’s problems as they prepared to introduce their plan to repeal the healthcare law.
The House Energy and Commerce Committee issued a list Monday of the oversight activities the panel has done since the Affordable Care Act’s passage in 2010. The compendium comes as House aides say a plan to repeal and partly replace the law will come early this week.
“Since the passage of Obamacare in 2010, the committee has convened 31 oversight hearings within its Oversight and Investigations and Health subcommittees,” the committee said.
The committee is one of four Senate and House panels that have drafted the Obamacare repeal plan, which is expected to gut the law’s taxes and mandates as well as the Medicaid expansion.
The panel highlighted investigations into the botched rollout of healthcare.gov in 2013 and the closure of 18 of the 23 taxpayer-funded consumer operated and oriented insurance plans intended to offer more competition on Obamacare’s marketplaces.
Another investigation was into the funding of cost-sharing reduction payments, which was the subject of a House lawsuit against the Obama administration.
The Obama administration said it did not need to get an appropriation for cost-sharing reduction payments, which are given to insurers to reduce the deductibles and copays of low-income Obamacare customers.
The Obama White House said it believed that the cost-sharing reduction payments could be given out via a permanent appropriation that bypasses Congress, just like the law’s tax credits.
A federal judge agreed with the House that the Obama administration circumvented Congress. The Obama administration appealed, but it was dropped after President Trump reached the White House.
The list highlighting Obamacare’s oversight problems comes as Republicans soon will begin to sell the repeal plan to a divided caucus.
House and Senate conservatives have balked at GOP leadership’s proposal to offer refundable tax credits to Obamacare customers instead of a tax deduction.
