To: clear who wrote (49881 ) 8/1/2013 11:22:37 AM From: FJB Respond to Reporter Issued 3 Free 'Obamaphones'... They carry electronic tablets and ask all passersby whether they’ve received their free phone “yet” — as if it were an inevitability. He asked if I had an insurance card, so I pulled out my trusty Blue Cross Blue Shield. He looked at it for a second, puzzled, then asked if I had Medicaid. No, I told him, just private insurance through my work plan. “Private insurance? What’s that?” he asked, maybe not facetiously. M y BCBS card was nevertheless photographed, as well as the first page of my Human Resources Administration paperwork. He asked for my name and my home address, and that was about it. The whole process took less than five minutes, and I had to provide no documentation verifying my income level or (nonexistent) welfare status.Traveling to several of the welfare offices in the city, I learned this was common practice. Obamaphone reps come in twos, and both will sign you up if they can. That’s a very questionable practice, given the Lifeline program’s rules: Each eligible household may receive only one Lifeline subsidy, and obtaining multiple subsidized phones from multiple Lifeline carriers is “a flat-out violation of our rules,” says Michelle Schaefer, an attorney-adviser from the FCC’s Telecommunications Access Policy Division, Wireline Competition Bureau.
