Congress may soon appoint a special government watchdog to oversee the implementation of Obamacare thanks to a pair of new bills in the House and Senate.
Rep. Peter Roskam, R-Ill., introduced a bill to the Ways and Means Committee Tuesday that would create a special inspector general to root out waste and fraud in the healthcare law’s rollout.
“In the years since Democrats rammed Obamacare through Congress, our country has already seen the costly consequences of this law: billions of dollars wasted on a failed website and overpayments, millions of Americans kicked off their healthcare plans, and skyrocketing premiums for hardworking families and small businesses,” said Roskam, who is chairman of the committee’s oversight subcommittee. “We need assurance that — until Obamacare is repealed and replaced — there is rigorous oversight in place to prevent more taxpayer dollars from being squandered on this law.”
The Special Inspector General for Monitoring the Affordable Care Act, or SIGMA, would be modeled after other special inspectors general that have successfully recovered billions of dollars by overseeing major programs or initiatives.
A similar watchdog created in 2008 for the Afghanistan reconstruction efforts has uncovered more than $1.6 billion in taxpayer savings and secured more than 608 convictions and debarments for individuals and companies that defrauded the government through its Afghan programs.
The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction has been able bridge oversight gaps that occurred when several federal agencies, including the Departments of State, Defense and Agriculture, spent taxpayer money on projects in Afghanistan that occasionally overlapped.
SIGMA would cut across the lines of authority surrounding the Department of Health and Human Services and the Internal Revenue Service, the agencies with the lion’s share of responsibility for Obamacare at the federal level.
Although the healthcare watchdog would be housed within HHS, it would also be able to press state agencies for answers if an investigation led SIGMA to a state-based Obamacare exchange.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., put forth a similar bill in the Senate Tuesday.
“We need to do everything possible to repeal and replace Obamacare with real health reforms that lower costs and restore the all-important relationship between a patient and their doctor,” Roberts said. “However, as long as this law is on the books, we need a watchdog, namely a Special Inspector General, to investigate its implementation and ensure our taxpayer dollars are being spent within the letter of the law.”
The often hurried government contracts that provided for work on key Obamacare components — including the botched Healthcare.gov website launch — would be a major area of interest for SIGMA.
A number of those contracts were awarded non-competitively as the government rushed to meet deadlines for the Obamacare rollout, leaving millions of taxpayer dollars in the hands of companies that may not have been prepared to meet contractual requirements.
