Health Law Fund-Raising Is Detailed
Nice company you have here. Shame if anything should happen to it.
By ROBERT PEAR
APRIL 20, 2014
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON — The Government Accountability Office provided new details on Sunday of how the Obama administration raised money from outside organizations to promote enrollment in health insurance under the health care law.
Republicans said such solicitations were meant to circumvent limits on government spending imposed by Congress. But in a report to Congress, the accountability office did not give a legal opinion on the propriety of the fund-raising. Administration officials said it was legal. Under federal law, they said, the secretary of health and human services can encourage support for nonprofits that promote public health.
Kathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary, “contacted the chief executive officers of five organizations to solicit support for one outside entity, Enroll America,” which ran a national campaign to help people sign up for insurance, the report said. Ms. Sebelius has announced that she plans to leave her post.
Specifically, the report said, Ms. Sebelius “requested financial support for Enroll America from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and H&R Block.” She also requested “nonfinancial support, such as technical assistance, from Ascension Health, Johnson & Johnson and Kaiser, which consists of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plans and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals.”
President Obama reported last week that over eight million people had signed up for insurance through federal and state exchanges.
Administration officials said private donations were needed because Congress had provided much less money than requested to publicize the law.
The report notes that the Health and Human Services Department regulates Kaiser, Ascension and Johnson & Johnson.
A spokesman for Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee, one of five lawmakers who had requested the report, said the senator hoped Ms. Sebelius’s replacement “will not ask the entities she regulates to support the president’s allies.”
Health and human services officials told investigators that they were not aware of any federal employees outside their agency who had solicited funds on behalf of Enroll America.
However, the report says a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation employee told investigators of a 2012 conversation in which a White House official “indicated a hope that R.W.J.F. would provide a significant financial contribution to support” Enroll America.
The report identifies the official as the deputy assistant to the president for health policy, but does not give her name, Jeanne M. Lambrew.
The foundation said the White House had estimated that groups like Enroll America would need $30 million. It said it had made grants to Enroll America totaling $13 million, but denied they were in response to the secretary’s call. |
