Federal Health Agency Blames Obamacare Launch for Lack of Transparency

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said Friday it has a bottleneck of Freedom of Information Act requests that may take it more than ten years to sort out. The reason? In part, the agency said, Obamacare.

This comes from the Center for Public Integrity, which filed suit to compel the release of documents related to potential Medicare overcharges after a FOIA request in 2013 went unanswered.

The Justice Department said CMS’s resources “have been placed under unusual strain” by the implementation of Obamacare. CMS, part of Health and Human Services, was one of the primary agencies overseeing the launching of Healthcare.gov, which faltered upon release in October of 2013.

Per CPI:

Justice lawyers called 2014 an “unusual year” for CMS because the open enrollment period for Obamacare health insurance exchanges “was a period of high activity at the agency.” CMS also is dealing with a “significant number of requests” for records about the exchanges.

That, combined with technological changes and limited staff, made for a backlog of 3,000 FOIA requests. “The ability of HHS to meet its obligations under the FOIA is limited by the scarcity of its available resources,” read a court filing, detailing only 19 workers dedicated to fulfilling FOIA requests.

“I have never heard of Obamacare being given as a reason for things taking a long time,” said Liz Hempowicz of the Project on Government Oversight. Nobody tell her about Twitter.

[h/t Center for Public Integrity]
[Image via Shutterstock]

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