A House panel said Tuesday that a top administration health official misled Congress last year by seeming to suggest that the government had already recaptured hundreds of millions of dollars from struggling state exchanges under Obamacare.
Instead, federal officials can point to only about $21 million in money they kept from being spent — far less than the $200 million Andy Slavitt, acting administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, said had been recouped during testimony last year to the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
All told, the government doled out some $4.6 billion to states that decided to set up and run their own health care exchanges, including the states that botched their rollouts, leaving customers in the lurch and forcing the federal government to prolong enrollment and grant exemptions from the Affordable Care Act.
Republicans have demanded that the administration try to get back some of the money they say the states wasted on badly run exchanges. Mr. Obama’s aides initially seemed to agree and said they would try to reel in “unallowable costs.”
The federal government did recover $32.5 million in a settlement with Maryland and its initial Web contractor, Noridian. It also halted the planned spending of another $21.5 million.
Beyond that, CMS can’t say whether it has recouped any more money or even how much the administration is seeking overall.
“I don’t have an update on those numbers,” CMS spokesman Aaron Albright said.
Sixteen states, plus the District of Columbia operated their own insurance exchanges when Obamacare launched in fall 2013.
While some succeeded, many websites were hobbled by technological glitches. Oregon, Nevada and Hawaii decided to ditch their websites and rely instead on the federal HealthCare.gov.
New Mexico’s website never got off the ground, so its residents also rely on the federal portal.
All sides said those states should repay federal taxpayers for goofs. But Republicans issued a report Tuesday that said Mr. Slavitt misled them in December by claiming some $200 million already had been collected.
“Our first priority is to be good stewards of the federal taxpayer’s dollars,” he told the committee at the time. “This means returning unspent dollars to the Treasury, closing grants, collecting improperly spent dollars and preventing more from going out the door. Over $200 million of the original grant awards have already been returned to the federal government, and we are now in the process of collecting and returning more.”
The administration said Mr. Slavitt was also talking about money collected from states that refused to set up their own exchanges and therefore never needed the aid.
Republicans reject that assurance, saying everyone at the time believed Mr. Slavitt’s $200 million number referred to money from states that did set up exchanges and took federal grants. Otherwise, they question why Mr. Slavitt would have used the word “recouped” if he meant the money wasn’t spent in the first place.
“The health law has been a house of cards, and as the negative headlines mounted, the administration’s point person either misspoke or intentionally misled Congress and the American people,” said Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, Michigan Republican, and oversight and investigations subcommittee Chairman Tim Murphy, Pennsylvania Republican.
Committee Republicans said even if Mr. Slavitt had meant money from states that declined to set up their own exchanges, the actual figure should have been more than $300 million — another indication, they said, that Mr. Slavitt misled them at the time.
CMS says the $200 million he cited was a “conservative” estimate.
“The acting administrator stands by his testimony. Mr. Slavitt clearly stated in his testimony that the over $200 million returned was unspent dollars or improperly spent dollars from the grant program,” Mr. Albright said. “CMS has always been clear with the committee, providing a detailed accounting of the grant funds on request, as well as multiple briefings and calls for the chairman and his staff.”
• Tom Howell Jr. can be reached at thowell@washingtontimes.com.
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