Republican Rep. Darrell Issa plans to press ahead with a subpoena for health department documents on a program he claims is being used to "buy" the election by hiding the effects of ObamaCare.
The Department of Health and Human Services handed over reams of material just minutes before a 5 p.m. ET deadline Thursday in response to Issa's demand 24 hours earlier. However, Issa's office called the cache "embarrassing," insufficient and not responsive to the congressman's request.
The subpoena is expected to go out Friday morning.
"Basically somebody hit a button and said print out a bunch of spreadsheets in an illegible format," Issa told Fox News. "So we will be issuing the subpoena."
The chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee effectively is accusing the department of stringing them along for months in their request for documents about an $8 billion program that pays bonuses to Medicare Advantage plans.
Issa claims the bonus program is being used to mask the first round of Medicare Advantage cuts in connection with the health care overhaul -- in order to win favor with seniors.
"It's an unbelievable abuse of power," he said Thursday. Issa said the program basically funds "what ObamaCare took away."
The program in question is called a "demonstration" project. But Issa complains the project is far more sweeping than a run-of-the-mill test program, and conveniently lasts until 2014.
"This is larger than every test they've ever done at HHS combined," Issa said. Issa's committee put out a video Thursday explaining its allegations
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The congressman further says the effects of ObamaCare's $200 billion in Medicare Advantage cuts over the next decade would have been felt starting this week -- if not for the bonus payments. Thanks to them, he wrote in an August letter, the project offsets 71 percent of the cuts this year.
But the department portrayed the program differently.
Via: Fox News
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