NYT Editorial Board: GOP Investigations of Obamacare’s Failed Exchanges Are a Form of “Harassment”

Like half the states that
attempted to build their own exchanges under Obamacare, Maryland
botched the job. And now it’s the latest state to come under
investigation for blowing
some $135 million in federal grants on an exchange that, to
this day, still does not work. The Baltimore Sun
reports:

A federal inspector general is launching a review into what went
wrong with Maryland’s health insurance exchange, the first
examination focused specifically on how millions of dollars in
federal money was spent by the state, according to the lawmaker who
requested the probe.

Rep. Andy Harris, a Baltimore County Republican
and vocal opponent of President Barack Obama’s health
care law, said officials with the inspector general for
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had
contacted him and indicated they will look into the creation of the
state’s glitch-prone exchange.

The probe, which Harris said would likely begin in a matter of
weeks, is the first of its kind to be revealed publicly.

The Government Accountability Office is already looking
into how Oregon managed to spend more than $300 million in federal
exchange funding on an online enrollment system that is, for
all practical purposes, completely broken; the GAO operation may
expand into other states as well.

There have been calls for investigations at the state-level as
well. A state auditor said at
the beginning of the year that there would be an investigation of
Minnesota’s exchanges, which also had a slew of technical problems.
The state Republican party in Vermont is also
pushing for an investigation of its exchange.

That so many of the enthusiastically embraced the health law
experienced so many troubles with their exchanges might suggest
that there serious systemic management and administration issues
within the blue states that tried and failed to build the online
marketplaces—and that it’s probably worth investigating what went
wrong.

But if you ask The New York Times editorial board, it’s
Republicans pushing for investigations who are really at fault. GOP
leaders, the paper’s editorial page complains, “are doing little to
solve the difficulties and are instead threatening to recover money
not yet spent on enrolling people, and harassing state officials
with requests for information about the salaries and vacation time
of directors of the state exchanges.”

So requests for information about the actions of senior
officials in charge of implementing large programs and attempts to
stop payment on failed government projects now constitute a form of
“harassment?” Alternatively, one might refer to this as
“oversight,” or even just basic administrative competence and
responsibility. But for at least some of the health law’s
supporters, it appears increasingly difficult to favor those things
and Obamacare at the same time.