Republican House investigators say the Treasury is stonewalling requests for detailed information about how and when the Obama administration decided to extend government subsides to consumers who will use federally run insurance markets under “Obamacare.”
Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, joined health subcommittee Chairman James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican, on Thursday in demanding 50 emails and other documents that may shed light on how the Treasury reached its decision.
The lawmakers and other critics of the Affordable Care Act say the administration is flouting the letter of its own law, which says tax credits intended to help people buy insurance should go to exchanges “established by the state.”
Officials in more than half of the states opted to let the federal government run their state-based exchange, where people without employer-based insurance will buy coverage with the help of tax credits, instead of taking on the responsibility themselves.
Treasury’s decision to extend tax credits to all of the exchanges is “inconsistent with the plain statutory language that restricted the availability of tax credits to exchanges established by states,” Mr. Issa and Mr. Lankford wrote to Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew on Thursday. “To date, the Treasury Department has provided very little information to support the administration’s assertion that it ‘carefully considered the language of the statute and the legislative history’ in coming to its decision to expand Obamacare.”
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